Guest feature: Planet gazing

By Professor Stephen Case

I teach for a lot of reasons, but I think at a basic level it really involves simply wanting to show other people some of the cool things I’ve seen.

At the core, a love of science seems to be a love of showing.

As an astronomer I get to do this to the nth degree.

Astronomy has always been about observation (the movement of the stars and planets, the progression of the seasons and constellations), but it didn’t really become about showing until exactly four hundred years ago this year.

Four hundred years ago was when a Florentine mathematician decided to build a simple instrument and point it at the sky.

The universe changed that night.

Galileo saw things no living person ever had before: spots on the Sun, mountains on the Moon, satellites of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus, to name a few.

These discoveries paved the way for the eventual acceptance of the fact that the Earth was not the center of the universe and did indeed orbit the Sun, a planet among other planets.

These changes had huge repercussions in the development of science, but perhaps of most interest to the non-astronomer was that they brought the universe closer — they made what had previously been airy speculation and theory a matter of seeing.

I get to relive this experience over and over with my astronomy classes.

This past week and a half a dozen students from my summer course set up telescopes in the field behind the coffee shop formerly known as Moon Monkey (which made it an especially fitting place for astronomy).

This particular evening we pointed our scopes at Saturn, visible this summer in the western sky. Almost immediately the rings snap into focus, as well as a tiny point of light to the upper left of the field of view: Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

No matter how many images of Saturn you’ve seen before, the view through a telescope is always different.

Students usually squint at the eyepiece and perhaps adjust the focus. Then there’s a moment of silence as they stare.

They glance upward, as if to ascertain that the bright star-like point in the sky is indeed what the telescope is pointing at.

Then back to the eyepiece and a soft exclamation: “I never thought it looked like that in real life.” I had no idea I could actually see the rings.”

Or, perhaps, my favorite, simply a soft, “Oh.”

Oh. So there it is. So that’s it.

The discovery is always new — whether the very first time with Galileo or over and over again with each student who sees the planet for the first time.

I’ll never get tired of watching other people look at Saturn for the first time through a telescope.

One of the student’s comments before we leave sticks with me.

“That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Not just tonight — like, ever. I’m serious.”

Well.

I’m not sure what more a teacher could want.

I think Galileo would be proud.

Stephen Case is an assistant professor of earth sciences and director of Strickler Planetarium at Olivet Nazarene University.