Eyeing the Skies With
a New Telescope
By Kristen Cole
Scheduling a telescope viewing in New England is no task for the meek.
When the Smith Department of Astronomy received as a gift a sophisticated solar telescope
this year, overjoyed faculty members immediately set a date and time to demonstrate
its capability on the steps of the Campus Center. It took three attempts before
they pulled it off.
Having a the telescope that offers a close-up of the magnetic storms that erupt on
the surface of the sun 93 million miles away is of little consequence if the weather
on earth does not cooperate. “It’s just part of being an astronomer,” says
Suzan Edwards, professor of astronomy. “We take it in stride.”
Although the astronomy department has an extensive collection of telescopes to peer
at the night sky, until this year it did not have one to see the sun.
A solar telescope had been at the top of the department’s wish list when Edwards
learned that the mother of Smith alumna Lisa Ilka Abrams ’90 was donating a
Coronado Solar Telescope in honor of her daughter.
Despite the December cold, the astronomy department’s
new solar telescope performed quite well in the hands of Leah Ingraham ’08,
left, and lab instructor Meg Thacher. Photo by Fish/Parham.
Geraldine Hogan presented the instrument to Smith in recognition of the role played
by the college “in the formation of the many fine women of the class of 1990.
“Lisa is just one of the many who learned, through a Smith College experience, that the sky is
not the limit and that you can reach for and be anything you want to be,” Hogan said.
Although science was one of her favorite classes at Smith, Abrams was not passionate
about the subject. A student of government and economics, Abrams went on to receive
a law degree and is an associate attorney at KarpHeurlinWeiss in Tucson, Arizona.
“The college gave me so much more than four years of education,” Abrams adds. “Smith
is really the place that taught me how to think.”
Her mother cofounded the Coronado Technology Group, a leading manufacturer and distributor
of solar telescopes and filters and producer of the instrument that is now available
for use by students in all of Smith’s astronomy classes.
Those who put their eyes to the lens will glimpse a sun that appears reddish because
the telescope filters out all but the red light emitted by the hot hydrogen atoms
that cause the storms on the sun, explains Edwards.
Hogan invited two Smith students to attend her fall solar conference for amateurs
in Tucson and to stay at Abrams’ home. Senior student Katie Means and sophomore
Rouwenna Lamm accepted the offer.
“I used to think that the sun was just an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy, but there’s
a lot we don’t yet understand about it,” says Lamm, an astronomy major from Berea, Kentucky.
The conference “made me realize it is an interesting field that is accessible to anyone.”
However, getting an unobstructed view of the sky is admittedly more difficult in
Northampton than it was in Tucson, where she could see from horizon to horizon, says
Lamm.
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