inside WSU

But 12-year-old Logan Watkins, a student at Goddard’s Discovery Intermediate School, was impressed.

"Look at it. It’s awesome," he beckoned to his aunt Melissa Watkins. They’d seen it several times before, on clear nights, but tonight was different.

Tonight they were looking at the moon as they’d never seen it before. Melissa, Logan and his 7-year-old brother James were getting a close-up view of the moon’s surface through the powerful telescope at Lake Afton Public Observatory.

That sense of awe in seeing our solar system up close, among young and old alike, is what Greg Novacek has loved about his job with the observatory since 1980.

"People ask me what is my favorite object to look at in the sky and I turn the question around and say that my favorite object is probably Saturn, because I get the most enjoyment out of showing it to people," LAPO director Novacek says. "After looking through the telescope, they say, ‘Ahh, it really does have rings.’ And I don’t care if it’s a 5-year-old or a 50-year-old, you get the same reaction."

For 20 years – since it opened June 12, 1981 – LAPO has had the distinction of being one of approximately a dozen observatories in the country that couples regular public viewing of the stars, planets and other atmospheric phenomenon with themed programs and interactive exhibits.

It probably does it at greater frequency, too, than most public observatories, with two nights of themed programs (on Fridays and Saturdays) presented 50 weeks a year. It also offers special programs for taking pictures of heavenly objects.

And then there are the 50 or so programs it offers on other nights and during the day for school groups.

Novacek and LAPO’s executive director David Alexander, a WSU physics professor who founded the observatory, estimate that about 10,000 people visit LAPO each year.

Some, like Wichitan Joel Ewy, first visited the observatory as youngsters. He returned in late August as part of an outing for young adults from Lorraine Avenue Mennonite Church in Wichita. "I love looking at the stars," he said as he took a break from a computer game that comprises one of the observatory’s exhibits.

When something extraordinary like a comet streaks across the sky, visitors come en masse.

When Halley’s comet made an appearance in the mid-1980s, traffic jams formed on MacArthur Road – at 4 a.m. as people clamored to look at the comet, Novacek recalls.

"We had programs morning, noon and night and we had 25,000 people visit that year, instead of the normal 10,000 visitors," Alexander remembers.

Located 20 miles southwest of downtown Wichita, on the northern side of Sedgwick County’s Lake Afton Park, the observatory’s unique dome-and-triangular shaped building houses a 16-inch Cassegrain telescope "that makes things appear 4,000 times brighter than they do to the unaided eye," explains Alexander.

Far away from any urban light pollution, the observatory is where Wichitans and others can see with their own eyes what they often see in books and photographs.

"You live in the city and you forget what the night sky looks like," says Alexander. "At (the observatory), you can look into the sky and see the Milky Way from the parking lot. People never see the Milky Way in the city, and it’s so spectacular to see."

While Alexander, like Novacek, loves the reaction people have to Saturn, he also enjoys showing visitors the Orion nebula. As he describes it, one can sense his own wonderment in seeing the nebula because of its astronomical significance.

Observatory offers special programs during 20th anniversary

With admission prices of $3 for adults, $2 for children ages 6-12 and free for children under age 6, Lake Afton Public Observatory remains an affordable activity.

As part of its 20th anniversary celebration this year, LAPO is offering special programming during October and November that will compare what astronomers knew about the universe when LAPO opened in 1981 and what is believed to be true today.

In late November and throughout December it will offer the program "Celestial Favorites," where favorites of both visitors and staff during the past 20 years will be viewed through the telescope. Saturn, a popular planet because of its unusual rings, will be observed during these programs.

For directions, specific programs and times, call WSU-STAR (978-7827) or go online to http://webs.wichita.edu/lapo. Programs are also listed on the WSU online calendar.

"It’s a beautiful object in the winter sky. It’s a nursery for stars. Stars are being born inside that cloud of gas," he says.

From LAPO’s beginning, Alexander wanted WSU’s public observatory to be more than just a place to point out a few heavenly sights on an occasional basis, which is how most public observatories operate.

That’s why he and Novacek came up with the concept of having themed programs. For example the program "Colonizing Space" offers a discussion on living in space coupled with telescope observations of Mars and the moon, two planets that have been discussed as possible space colony sites.

Alexander, Novacek, assistant director Scott Kardel, a student assistant and a handful of volunteers who share a love for astronomy rotate responsibility for presenting the programs.

In between observing sights through the telescope, visitors can take advantage of interactive exhibits throughout the observatory. Some exhibits are permanent, while others are program-related.

With some ordinary plumbing pipes, visitors can assemble a makeshift telescope. At another exhibit, visitors can look at, and even touch, a number of meteorites. One learns that more meteorites are found in Kansas than anywhere else in the United States, besides Texas. With Kansas being a farming state, more meteorites are uncovered.

One meteorite that is for viewing-only is a postage stamp-sized piece of a lunar meteorite, one of the few such meteorites on display anywhere in the United States.

When Alexander first joined WSU’s faculty in 1971, he and students would observe the sky with a few telescopes on the south end of McKinley Hall’s rooftop. A few years later, WSU was given access to a former "Moonwatch" site at 13th Street and Greenwich. Moonwatch was an international program started in the 1960s to track satellites, but by the mid-1970s interest had waned in the program.

By the late 1970s, Alexander started thinking of how the physics department could better prepare its majors who wanted to go into graduate programs in astronomy. He shared his vision of an observatory that would be open to the public as well with a stranger at a cocktail party who’d asked about suitable places to observe the night sky through a telescope.

"At the end of the conversation, he said, ‘That’s a great idea. Why don’t you come to my office next week and show me the details,’ and he handed me his business card. To show you how naïve I was, I hadn’t realized he was the mayor of Wichita, Jim Donnell," Alexander says.

A few proposals and modifications later, Alexander got city and county backing to build the observatory on land provided by Sedgwick County. Until 1994, the Wichita school district and WSU split the operating costs. When USD 259 was forced to cut its budget, it reluctantly ended that partnership.

Since 1994, the observatory has been operated solely by WSU’s Fairmount Center for Science and Mathematics Education, an entity that was developed at the time to handle the running of LAPO, the Kansas Science Olympiad and other science and math outreach programs. Various grants and corporate gifts fund the center and its activities, including LAPO.