More than 50 people stood and gazed at the sky at the West campus Tuesday night as they waited in line to see Jupiter through a telescope.

The West campus hosted the stargazing event to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope.

Professor Paul Schmidtke, from the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, oversaw the event and said the campus holds an astronomy open house once every semester.

Most of the telescopes at the event were focused on Jupiter and its moons, which will be easy to see for the rest of 2009.

“The invention of the telescope has opened up our whole universe,” Schmidtke said. “We used to live thinking Earth was about all there was out there. With the telescope, we were able to see stars and figure out there are galaxies out there besides our own.”

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization named 2009 the International Year of Astronomy because it marks 400 years since Galileo Galilei invented the telescope.

Several students who attended the event had never used a telescope, including psychology freshman Chris Haji.

“I really just want to see a planet, it’s not every day that you can see one,” Haji said.

Life sciences freshman Quincy Egwu said he had seen Orion’s Belt through a telescope in the past but had never seen a planet.

“I think it will be really cool to see Jupiter, to see some place we can’t live, but it’s bigger than us,” Egwu said.

The telescope Haji and Egwu looked through was a 16-inch Dobsonian, the largest telescope at the event.

Neptune and Pluto were also visible, said volunteer Kevin Legore, owner of the Dobsonian telescope.

After looking through the telescope, first-time telescope user and psychology freshman Chris Wittmier said he appreciates that the West campus hosted a non-traditional event like this.

“It’s something that you can’t really do on your own and I was glad to see something I hadn’t seen before,” Wittmier said.

When Haji first laid eyes on Jupiter through the Dobsonian telescope, he was astonished, he said.

“This is the first time I got to look at another part of the universe,” he said. “After [the volunteer] told me you could fit 1,300 Earths in Jupiter, I was shocked. It was quite nifty.”

Egwu said looking at the planet led to a realization.

“I realized how big the universe is and how small we really are,” he said. “It puts things into perspective.”

Reach the reporter at sheydt@asu.edu.