Something's goin' down... wayyy up.

On Wednesday, the Creeker family went to the observatory to learn about space and the night sky. Dr Lombardi, the astronomy professor at Allegheny, pointed out things to find. He showed us constellations and we learned how to spot satellites as they pass by. We were able to look through the telescopes to get a close view of some of our neighboring planets. With much clarity we saw the rings of Saturn as well as the moons of Jupiter. Inside the observatory, we learned how to operate the huge telescope. We oriented the observatory the same way they did when it was built in 1901. The dome roof was spun in a circle with a gear that a camper would rotate with a thick rope. Even though the observatory and its telescope was over 100 years old, we were able to see planets, galaxies and a star cluster called M-15. This particular star cluster is only 50 light years across but it harbors over 500 thousand stars. It looked like a cloud of dust in front of a pitch black canvas, but each spec of dust was a star!