BYU NewsNet - Galileo remembered, honored at Astrofest

In honor of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first glance through the telescope, the Physics and Astronomy Department is sponsoring its first-annual Astrofest this weekend, an event aimed at getting participants to discover astronomy.

“Galileo was the first to point a telescope at the heavens,” said Denise Stephens, an assistant physics and astronomy professor. “Our goal is to get everyone to look through their telescope at least once this year.”

The free event, coordinated by graduate student Heather Jones and co-sponsored by the BYU Astronomical Society, will occur on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Eyring Science Center and at the Wilkinson Student Center terrace.

Activities include physics demonstrations, foam rocket launches, free shows at the BYU Planetarium and solar telescopes to view the sun with.

“We want to inspire people and get them interested in astronomy,” said Jones, who is studying physics and astronomy education. “We want to motivate the next generation.”

Jones said she wanted to have the event coincide with this year’s international emphasis on astronomy. According to the International Astronomical Institution, 2009 is being recognized as the International Year of Astronomy with the slogan, “the universe, yours to discover.”

The first-annual festivity comes amid recent news about an increasing amount of space debris orbiting the earth and the Hubble Space Telescope being repaired by a team of NASA astronauts aboard the

Atlantis shuttle.

“[Hubble Space Telescope] is going to die soon unless it gets serviced, and if it didn’t get serviced, it would crash to the earth,” Stephens said, mentioning the repairs being done by the shuttle crew this week. “So it will get serviced.”

While many of the events at the Astrofest will be geared toward youth, Stephens said college students and adults will be intrigued as well.

For example, Provo residents may be interested in West Mountain observatory’s resident astronomer, David Laney, who will lecture on the problem of urban light pollution at 10 a.m., noon and 2 p.m. on Saturday in C295 of the Eyring Science Center. Light pollution is a problem where too much city light obstructs the view of constellations in the night sky, Laney said.

“Utah is a state where people go to enjoy the outdoors,” he said, commenting on the increasing amounts of light found in urbanized Utah areas such as Provo. “But when they get here, visitors may not have the experience they are looking for.”

The concluding activity for Astrofest is a “star party” where attendees will be able to look through telescopes from 9 to 11 p.m. on Saturday night.

The department is also starting a public lecture series on topics in astronomy that will occur in the HBLL the first Tuesday of every month until the end of the year. The first lecture is at 7:30 p.m. on June 2 and features astronomy professor J. Ward Moody, who will speak about the question, “Is the universe infinite?”

For a full list of events at Saturday’s Astrofest, visit the Department of Physics and Astronomy’s Web site at www.physics.byu.edu.