Area students gazing to the stars might have to look twice for their favorite constellations as smoke and fog make urban stargazing an increasingly difficult task.
Because of the changing view of the cosmos, Boston University’s astronomy department is teaching students to chart the sky using data.
“You can’t see the glories of the night sky in an urban area,” College of Arts and Sciences astronomy professor Michael Mendillo said. “But when it’s dark you can see the major constellations and the planets. You really have to study astronomy in non-observational ways here in Boston.”
Mendillo said while BU’s urban environment is not ideal for astronomy observation, it is adequate for learning. Although light pollution might deter researchers from studying the stars in the city, it generally does not negatively affect academic work, he said.
“The best way to describe an astronomy department is as an applied physics department focusing on astronomical phenomena,” astronomy graduate student Sean Lockwood said. “There’s a lot of computer modeling, remote data collection and reduction and instrumentation work. As strange as it sounds, the vast majority of my time is not spent observing with telescopes.”
Most of the collegiate astronomy work does not involve observation, but rather data processing and applying mathematics and physics, CAS astronomy professor Elizabeth Blanton said.
“There are all different branches of astronomy,” she said. “You don’t necessarily have to use an optical telescope to be an astronomer.”
Astronomy students said they agreed observation is only a small part of studying astronomy, and most data astronomers use come from large surveys.
“Wherever you live, the biggest telescopes aren’t on university campuses,” Blanton said. “They’re up at 14,000 feet. That’s a misconception that people have. They’ll say, ‘Is it hard to work in Boston?’ Well, no, because I have to travel to work anyway.”
BU professor- and graduate-level research is conducted outside Boston in locations such as Chile, Hawaii and Arizona where altitudes are higher and more advanced telescopes are located, Blanton said.
“A research astronomer would never use a telescope in Boston because it’s at sea level, it’s cloudy and it’s foggy,” CAS astronomy department Chairman James Jackson said. “If you’re not worried about the best-quality images of all time, Boston’s a great place.”
Astronomers from BU have made several discoveries, including confirming the existence of solar planets using the Perkins Telescope at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., which BU partially owns, Jackson said.
Beyond sending students across the country to use superior telescopes, the astronomy department — one of fewer than 40 similar programs in the country — trains students using sophisticated equipment to use data in several fields of astronomy, including astrophysics and space physics, Lockwood said.
