About
Notes From the Hilltop
A Sea of Stars: A Visit to Our Campus Observatory
One of my favorite spots on campus is the field and orchard surrounding the observatory. I walk there often, and in the early morning, the light falls with what Emily Dickinson would say is a “certain slant,” and the views roll and undulate around and past our star gazing site. The observatory itself is a fascinating engineering feat since the roof slides open and onto a wooden prop, and inside, the telescopes sit in silence until we invade the space with a class or a group of students and faculty for an evening activity.
Raymond Feng ’25 took a phenomenal photo of the Milky Way just suspended above the observatory. It is a dreamy, floating image of space, and Raymond captured it so well. It almost looks like a painting. With permission from faculty, he camped out to capture the photo at the exact right time. Up in that field, even before you enter the observatory, the quiet of the night and the sea of stars enable you to put things into perspective and breathe deeply.
We have two graduates who were ground-breaking telescope designers – Russell Porter 1891, who designed the Palomar Telescope in California and George Cheney 1948, who worked on the lens for the Hubble Telescope. In the spirit of their work, we continue to have an Astronomy class that Christine Armiger offers. Recently, we invited a guest speaker, Erik Schmitt, up to our observatory. Erik represents the Southern Vermont Astronomy Group and brought a 12” Dobsonian telescope with encoders that connect to SkySafari, an app that allows you to view space and constellations, automatically updating movements in real time. Vermont Academy students arrived to see the star clusters on a cool, Wednesday night. Erik is an incredible teacher, prompting discussions in a variety of topics – black holes, the distance of stars, space travel, and Starlink. Starlink is the satellite internet constellation operated by aerospace company SpaceX that was dotted across the sky like a bright invader! Saturn came through so clearly, and the Sagittarius and Hercules clusters were also notable viewing moments.
We all learned how to find the North Star from the edge of the Big Dipper, and that it was not
necessarily the brightest of the stars in the sky. Myths were untangled, and the pure science of what we were seeing as well as the awe it inspired made this one of my favorite evening events at Vermont Academy thus far. Families visiting campus during Family Weekend will, weather permitting, have the opportunity to see these wonders of the skies themselves in our observatory after Family Weekend Cabaret on Friday, October 13.
Vermont Academy is a coed college preparatory boarding and day school in southern Vermont, serving grades 9-12 plus a postgraduate year.
