Middelburg is famous for many things; its slave trade, its bolussen and the Lange Jan, but the town was also host to the inventor of the telescope (there’s some debate on who it was, just take a Van Gent course). However, it is because of this invention that Middelburg has its own star observatory, located on the Heerengracht 52. The old building is filled to the brim with space enthusiasts and models of planets. Wait! Don’t leave yet I promise you this article gets more exciting.
If you know anything about space you know it’s big and endless and super cool. So last Friday when I had the opportunity to visit the star observatory as part of my Scientific Methodology course, I obviously could not let it go – seriously it was mandatory… Since it was a theme night we first had a basic lecture about all things galactic. Good news though, there might be another planet nearby with life forms on them; it just takes us a couple million years to get there. What’s a couple million years if you get a lifetime in space?!
After a break we got a short history lesson on the invention of the telescope, which then lead us to the real thing: four big telescopes pointed towards the sky. One was focused on the northern star, two were focused on the moon, and one was focused on our neighboring nebula: Andromeda. I’m sad to say that all I saw of Andromeda was a dusty cloud, because the moon was too bright to see it clearly. The two telescopes focused on the moon were probably my favorite, as I’ve had a fascination with the moon since I was little – maybe Disney’s Mulan is to blame. It was really interesting to see something gigantic in such detail, like now you can look at other big craters besides the ones on your face.
So if you are looking for something to do on a Friday night that is totally out of this world, the star observatory is open every Friday from 19:30 until 22:00 and the entrance is free!
Yonna Kuipers, Class of 2017, is a History and Linguistics Major, from Schiedam, the Netherlands.
