Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan aren't the only stars ASU students are watching these days.
With the School of Earth and Space Exploration, students can also check out the Big Dipper and Orion.
Hosted by graduate students of the school, the Astronomy Open House has been an on-campus activity for longer than anyone can seem to remember.
The open house began as an outreach program for students interested in the school and has grown to accommodate the general public in a free, monthly event.
On the last Friday of each month, three times a semester, anyone interested in attending the open house has the opportunity to take a step into the world of astronomy. Activities include: telescope viewing, a physics demonstration, a meteorite display and a poster display.
"We're doing all these things to try to integrate the communities; that's why I do experiments like this, it's table-top astronomy," said Brian Gleim, who presented a physics demonstration showing the way the eye views different colors through different gases at the last open house, Sept. 28. Gleim is a graduate teaching assistant in the school.
The open house is also a way of being able to view prominent features in the night sky through eight-inch telescopes. Upcoming viewings include Mars, Orion, Taurus and the Andromeda Galaxy in October and November, said Angel G. Fuentes, one of the graduate students hosting the event.
"The telescopes are head to head with the meteorite display to be the most popular display we have here," she said. "[People] like the telescopes because they can see the planets, but with the meteorites they can actually touch them."
In addition to these activities, the open house night includes a presentation from a graduate student in the School of Earth and Space Exploration based his or her research.
In September, Jon Rohrbach spoke about common misconceptions and answers to the question, "So why is the sky blue?" Rorhbach explained that no one had ever explained to him the answer to this question, which is what led him to look for it himself.
"Every discovery has led to more questions than answers," Rohrbach said, "which in turn, has led to more grad student projects than professors can give."
The next astronomy open house will be hosted Oct. 26 on the fifth floor of the Bateman Physical Sciences Building H-Wing from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Reach the reporter at: allison.gatlin@asu.edu.
