So you’re on the moon, right, and you see a “No Smoking” sign (since there is no more smoking in bars or restaurants anymore) but say to yourself, “No one can see me way up here, I’m on the moon.” So you take out your pack of Marlboros and lighter and you’re about to light up when the little speaker inside your trusty space helmet squeaks, “Don’t do that, we can see you.” What?!
Even if it were possible to light a match on the moon, which it’s not, since there is no oxygen, the guys at NASA would be able to see the tiny flame protruding from your favorite naked lady lighter. In fact, they can see things a lot smaller than that. From the smallest twinklings of distant stars they can infer the size and character and even potential habitability of planets much too remote to be seen—planets so distant that it would take us half a million years in a spaceship to get there.
Astronomers can do the most incredible things these days. With their radio telescopes, they can capture wisps of radiation so preposterously faint that the total amount of energy collected from outside the solar system by all astronomers combined is “less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground.” (From “A Short History of Nearly Everything”).
I used to think that these types of research and exploration belonged only to the real-life versions of the people in the Smithsonian Air and Space museum in Washington (my first and only real exposure to the “world” of outer space). However, I have recently learned that right here on our blossoming campus in Middletown is a gem; a department that boasts recognition as arguably the top undergraduate astronomy program in the country.
Professor of Astronomy John Salzer began working at Wesleyan in 1991 as an assistant professor. While there are only four faculty members in the department, Salzer and his colleagues each pursue different research interests. This provides for a wide range of topics on which they can educate their students, from star-formation to cosmology, and from optical wavelengths to the radio and X-rays. Despite such a small group of faculty, Salzer estimates that nearly 40 percent of Wesleyan undergraduates take an astronomy course at some point; a number he would like to see grow to 80 percent or 90 percent in the future.
Back in 1836, the first president of Wesleyan, Wilber Fisk, made a trip to Paris and bought a 5-inch refracting telescope. The purchase was the beginning of the astronomy department at Wesleyan and is honored in the lobby of the Van Vleck Observatory. At the time, and for a long time after the initiation, Wesleyan only had one astronomer on its faculty. Since then, the department has grown and become a research facility that yields results as good as any other university in the country.
When asked what makes Wesleyan’s astronomy department stand out from other institutions, Salzer was quick to point out the methodology he and his colleagues employ conducting research with students. All four members are very active in their fields and produce high-quality research, but the difference for Wesleyan is that these faculty members collaborate with their students and educate them by “doing science,” as Salzer says.
“A lot of times what happens at the larger institutions is that professors come up with projects that are primarily pedagogical, a training exercise,” Salzer said. “The ‘unspoken’ policy we use is that we don’t do that. My students collaborate with me on my research. They’re doing the real thing.”
Although it is a large faculty in comparison to other liberal arts schools, the fact that there are only four faculty members is limiting to how many students can be taught astronomy. The introductory classes are popular for science and non-science majors, but Salzer mentioned that right now they are limited in what they can do.
“These are exciting times in astronomy and there is a lot of new technology out there,” Salzer said. “It would be great to teach more students, perhaps even 90 percent of the Wesleyan students.”
After receiving $1 million in grants over the past two years and producing more undergraduate astronomy majors than any other university, it’s easy to see why Wesleyan is so well respected in the field. Salzer noted that at conferences he is always petitioned for Wesleyan students by graduate universities because the students here are among the best in the country and are so well-prepared.
You don’t become rich as an astronomer, but you do explore some pretty interesting ideas, like, oh, I don’t know, where we came from or what the role of humankind is. It may be one of the smallest departments on campus and it may be tucked away on top of Foss Hill, but the astronomy department here is out of this world (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Like Salzer said, most people on this earth walk around looking out or down, but astronomy is about looking up. So this spring, when you’re sitting on the hill and feel that first wave of nausea hit after downing a couple, don’t look down—rather, look up to the sky and remember how cool it is that we have one of the largest observatories in New England and the best program in the country.
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