People shivering in their T-shirts waited excitedly on top of Sherzer Hall’s roof Thursday to see the Iridium Flare, which was unexpectedly announced. With silence, about 16 Eastern Michigan University students looked to the clear night sky around 8 p.m. to see what looked like a big bright star gradually appear and then fade away. It lasted about three seconds.
An Iridium Flare is reflected sunlight from a satellite. The satellite flares if the sunlight hits it at the right angle after sunset or sunrise. It is named after the 55th element in the periodic table.
“Seeing the Iridium Flare was awesome,” said EMU student Alfonso Mercado, 19, major undecided. “It was my first official one. We probably look at an Iridium Flare before, and never realized it.”
The Iridium Flare was just one of the things that Eastern Michigan University’s Astronomy Club had planned that particular meeting. The Astronomy Club meets at 7:30 p.m. every Thursday in 402 Sherzer Hall. The telescopes and the roof can be accessed by entering Room 500A.
The biggest telescope is located in its own room. People waited in line to see a ring nebula called M57. A nebula is a star that exploded, and a ring nebula is a star that exploded into a shape that looks like a donut. In another room, people watched “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
The club is free and open to the public, with ending times around 11 p.m. – 12 a.m. depending on what is scheduled. A steady stream of EMU students and parents with their children come in and out of the Sherzer Observatory based on their own schedules.
Although there are some brief lectures and demonstrations, most of the learning at the Astronomy Club is self-motivated or class-mandated for astronomy labs.
Self-motivation is how the current observatory director, Norbert Vance, became interested in astronomy. Vance had a telescope since he was 10 years old, when he would just use it to watch airplanes.
Now, he is involved in the process of setting up the planetarium in Mark-Jeffereson Hall. A planetarium gives people a 3-D sense of the sky.
“It’s about time Eastern has a decent planetarium; U of M has two,” Vance said. “Eastern has been a teacher’s college for years. We graduate a lot of teachers. They go off to high schools and colleges to teach, and they’ll encounter planetariums, but not at this university. It’s been a long time coming.”
A self-proclaimed “tour guide of the galaxy” Vance equates why people watch the stars to why people want to climb Mt. Everest. To him, it’s the ultimate reality show that exposes the truths on popular myths such as horoscopes.
“I’ve been known to make astrologers cry,” Vance said. “They quickly find out from me that their basis for measurement in astrology is false. There are 13 constellations in the zodiac instead of twelve. The missing one is Ophiuchus. If you’re a Libra, you’re more probably a Virgo.”
Astrology is as different from astronomy as cosmetology is to cosmology. While astronomy focuses more on what is the current state of the universe, cosmology is more about how the universe was created.
Ken Lingerfelt is a 48-year-old EMU cosmology major that came to EMU because of the Sherzer Observatory. He heard about the observatory while he was at Oakland Community College from his professors who graduated from EMU. Although he is retired, he came back to school because he wanted to learn more.
“I’m not a religious person, but when I look out there, I have to believe that there’s something that made all that beauty,” Lingerfelt said. “There are so many beautiful things out there. People go about their business and they never stop to look.”