Lily Zaragoza
Stars, galaxies, meteoroids and jet propulsion all sound like lingo from a “Star Wars” movie, but what do these terms have to do with Pierce College?
The Pierce College Astronomy Society (PCAS,) is open to all students and community members who want to learn more about these words.
Every month PCAS has meetings with different interesting topic of discussion which include a guest speaker and technological demonstrations.
The gatherings are held in Cinema 3200 from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. on scheduled dates.
Carolyn Mallory, who has been teaching at Pierce for four years, and who three years ago founded PCAS when she was made Faculty Advisor for the Astronomy Department, said that “PCAS is made to be interesting and fun for everyone, but very educational. . . It’s more of an academic outreach organization.”
Mallory explained that meetings begin with guest speakers who are researching astronomers with a reputation.
Penelope Ward, a second-year Pierce student and member of PCAS, said “. . . The speakers are fantastic, many doing cutting edge research right now at places such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, UCLA, UCSB [and] UCSD . . .,” said Ward in an e-mail interview.”
“Speakers have very interesting facts to share, are very friendly and really enjoy being with students,” said Mallory.
“The informal setting is wonderful . . . it is totally appropriate after the lectures to approach the speakers for a conversation,” Beth Nordeen, 33, a first-year Pierce student and member of PCAS, said in an e-mail interview.
After the guest speaker, there’s a refreshment intermission then technology demonstrations begin.
During the demonstrations, students learn things they can do hands on and by themselves.
Past demonstrations taught students how to look for meteoroids or build their own telescopes.
The next meeting, on Friday, will include a lecture on volcanoes within the solar system and earth.
The guest speaker for the meeting is scientist Dr. Rosaly Lopes, who is an expert on volcanism and who, according to piercecollegeastronomysociety.org, the PCAS Web site, holds the world record for discovering the most volcanoes. That same night, for the technology demonstration, there will be a telescope set up in front of the meeting room hooked up to a video monitor which will allow students to observe the night sky from inside the room.
Other meetings to follow will include one on the dawn mission to the asteroids on April 13. The next will be on super massive black holes and will take place on May 18.
During the April 13 meeting there will be a brand new telescope raffled off to one lucky winner. To participate in the raffle all you have to do is attend the free meeting.
Another event that the club will be hosting is a camping trip and star party. PCAS provides large telescopes for guests to use at night.
During the day everyone goes fishing, hiking, swimming and shares group meals.
“[We] get to look through lots of different scopes at all kinds of fabulous objects, have fun, barbecue and camp fire,” said Ward about the April 20 to 22 camping trip at Lake Casitas in Ojai, which is about 70 miles north of Los Angeles.
The camping trip and use of the club’s telescopes will be free. There will be a one-time $6 fee paid to Lake Casitas for the entire weekend.
PCAS consists of about 80 members. For PCAS news, upcoming meetings, raffles or to view previous camping trip photos, log onto piercecollegeastronomysociety.org.