Title: The Caretakers of the Observatory: Lifting Off With Georgetown’s Astronomical Society

On any clear Tuesday night on a hilltop that overlooks the Hilltop, you may notice students gathered outside the Heyden Observatory with telescopes pointed to the heavens.

Inside the observatory, dozens of students cram into the small space centered around a massive 12-inch telescope, an over-century-old relic from Georgetown’s golden age in astronomy. A soft red light illuminates the room to preserve students’ night vision.

The students gathered are members of the Georgetown University Astronomical Society. And for the last 52 years, they’ve served as caretakers of the observatory. The Astronomical Society’s primary mission is to maintain the observatory while promoting space awareness and preserving Georgetown’s storied history of pondering the stars.

“There’s an inherent curiosity in a lot of Georgetown students to understand what’s going on in the cosmos,” said Sophia Chang (SFS’25, G’26), who serves as the co-president of the club. “From a Georgetown perspective, the intersection of space and international affairs and business is becoming more and more interesting every single day … I think that Georgetown in particular is poised to seize those opportunities.”

Astronomy and space policy were not on Chang’s radar when she came to Georgetown. But after she joined one stargazing session her first year, she was enamored by the observatory’s charm.

“A lot of space people grew up on space. They live, breathe, eat and sleep space. I was not one of those kids,” Chang said. “[But] when I got to the observatory, I just fell in love with it.”

Georgetown’s Rich Space History

For many years, Georgetown’s astronomy department was one of the university’s crown jewels.

At its epicenter was the Heyden Observatory, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Founded by Rev. James Curley, S.J., in 1844, the observatory and the astronomy program would help produce some of the brightest astronomers of the 19th and 20th centuries, extending the Jesuits’ longstanding history and fascination with space.

These Georgetown astronomers would go on to make important contributions to the field, from Rev. George Fargis, S.J., who invented the photochronograph; to Vera Rubin, who discovered evidence for the existence of dark matter; and Curley himself, who pinpointed the precise longitude of Washington, DC, in 1846.

By the mid-20th century, Georgetown had one of the strongest and largest graduate astronomy programs in the world.

Yet despite the success of the astronomy department, as DC became a sprawling metropolis with increasing light pollution blinding the night sky, Georgetown closed its astronomy program in 1972, entrusting the observatory and the surrounding space to the Department of Biology and the Astronomical Society.

A Weekly Stargazing Tradition

Ever since the astronomy department closed, the Astronomical Society has manned the telescopes at the observatory every Tuesday at 8 p.m. —  pending the weather, of course — to stargaze and share the wonders of space with anyone in the Georgetown community.

“We normally have people who are running tours simultaneously with manning the telescopes,” Chang said. “We’ve got a whole little ecosystem of teaching students about space and the local history of Georgetown space. It’s a lot of fun.”

Those who join the stargazing sessions have access to not only small, pedestrian telescopes but also the 12-inch telescope housed in the observatory dome, an astronomical device that was state-of-the-art when it was first installed in 1882.

This semester, with the observatory under renovation, the club has set up shop on Healy Lawn with telescopes and poster boards to educate passersby about the history of the observatory. And, according to Chang, even more students have come out to observation nights, taking advantage of the prime location on campus. 

“The fact that we’re on the lawn means anyone can come over and look through the telescope,” she said. “We’ve been getting a lot more students who otherwise wouldn’t have time to go up to the observatory because it is a far walk.”

On a typical observation night, students can expect to see the moon up close, as well as Jupiter and Mars. If they’re lucky, they can also see the Andromeda Galaxy. Chang recommends braving the cold in the winter months — the stiller atmosphere makes for clearer skies with more visible celestial objects. 

When Chang is behind the telescope, her personal favorite astronomical object of fascination is the so-called Red Planet.

“I love looking at the moon, but a lot of the work that the U.S. is doing right now is to get to Mars, and I think it’s just exciting to look at it through the telescope and think about what human settlement and space flight and exploration is going to look like 10 years from now,” she said.

Outside of regular stargazing sessions, the club does other activities to promote space awareness at Georgetown. Last fall, students launched a weather balloon and purchased cameras to practice astrophotography. This spring, the Astronomical Society co-hosted a conference on the search for extraterrestrial life alongside the SETI Institute and the Earth Commons Institute.

And on April 8, the Astronomical Society came prepared for the solar eclipse, the once-in-a-generation event that won’t happen again in the contiguous U.S. until 2044. Parked in front of Healy Hall, among hundreds of other members of the Georgetown community, the club handed out eclipse glasses and set up a solar telescope to view the astronomical phenomenon.

For Chang, what once started as accepting an invitation to join a stargazing session has taken off into a potential career path. This summer, she is interning at a space trade association that advocates for specific aerospace policies before Congress. She said it was through Georgetown and the Astronomical Society that she discovered the emerging field of space security and policy, and she’s excited about where it will take her next.

“My college experience is really intertwined with the observatory. And if in the future I can renovate it and be part of its story and help prepare it and give it to the next person in a better state than I found it, then that would be really satisfactory for me,” she said.