A Shot at Space

By: Lynn Thomasson

Want to go to Mars but short on cash for a ride in the space shuttle?

A UNC study abroad trip to the SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research) observatory in Chile takes you close to the stars without ever having to zip up a spacesuit.

Instead of cloistering yourself in a cramped space shuttle for days, wouldn’t it be better to take a tour through Chile? Climb snow-covered volcanoes to peek at churning lava, feel the steam and spray of geysers erupting at the highest active field on Earth, watch icebergs chip and fall off glaciers, dance the night away at discos with local Chileans, and take a road trip across a barren, dusty desert. Don’t forget to try the llama shish kabobs.

But this isn’t a vacation. You’ll also be studying cosmic evolution and other courses in astronomy and physics at a state-of-art observatory while snapping pictures of galaxies, nebulae, and star births.

Just ask Helen Chappell, a sophomore at Carolina who spent her fall 2004 semester studying at SOAR. “I felt like it was a big field trip,” said Chappell.

Perched atop Cerro Pachon, a mountain nestled in the Andes foothills, SOAR wields a four-meter mirror that weighs over seven thousand pounds. “With these huge domes, the whole thing spins around and moves – acrobatics that you didn’t think a building could do,” said Chappell.

Astronomers all over the world come to work at SOAR. “The classes had a neat twist to it because we had all these experts around. We had access to a lot of colloquiums going on,” remarked Chappell. With the help of two professors, Chappell and ten other students pointed a telescope equipped with a 14-inch mirror at the night sky to shoot color photographs and a telescope with a 24-inch mirror for the black and white shots.

From these photographs, astronomers see more than just pretty pictures. They’re also packed with information. “Blue stars tend to be younger. If you see a blue region in a galaxy that means there is a lot of new star formation, then you can theorize about why its there,” said Chappell.

But even these young astronomers had free time to explore to the sights and sounds of Chile. For Thanksgiving break, part of the group traveled to Patagonia, hopped on a ski lift and hiked up Villarica, a snow-covered, active volcano. Once reaching the top, they peered down to see lava exploding deep inside the crater. Chappell noted, “We slid down the volcano on our butts. We had an ice ax to slow ourselves down so we didn’t fly off the mountain.”

They also took time out to visit the neighboring observatories like the Very Large Telescope Project (VLT). The VLT project combines the power of four telescopes, each with an eight-meter mirror, creating a telescope with the light collecting capacity of a 16-meter mirror, the largest in the world. Chappell said, “It’s like science fiction with gigantic telescopes.”

SOAR Telescope – More information about the telescope, including live pictures from the web cam.

Department of Physics and Astronomy – UNC works directly with six other observatories. Find out which observatory is right for you.

Star Power – An article by Jason Smith about SOAR and the UNC astronomers who helped build it.

Lynn Thomasson is sophomore journalism major at Carolina.