New observatory has teacher seeing stars

BARSTOW • Stargazers will soon get a chance to zoom in on galaxies far, far away with the help of Barstow Community College’s new observatory.

“We have some of the clearest skies in the country,” said BCC astronomy instructor Scott Bulkley, who has worked on bringing an observatory to campus for the past 10 years. For Bulkley, the observatory will serve as a classroom for his evening astronomy class.

Tracy Miller, who took Bulkley’s class in the past, read about planets and stars in textbooks but enjoyed the hands-on experience once they headed outside at night with small personal telescopes.

“It was nice to actually see the rings of Saturn,” Miller said. Student Michael Pugliese remembers checking out Jupiter’s four major moons as well as the Earth’s moon.

“We were able to see shadows on the moon,” he said. “Things that were mapped out on maps we were able to see through the telescope.”

But heading outdoors into the middle of campus and viewing with small individual telescopes often presented problems, Bulkley said.

“You had all the lights from campus,” he said. Conditions had to be just right or the small telescopes would wobble in the wind. And the worst was being caught on the lawns when the sprinklers would unexpectedly start spraying.

Those will all be problems of the past with the new observatory, which sits on the highest elevated and darkest area on campus, Bulkley said.

“It’s like night and day — no pun intended,” he joked.

The college is on the verge of unveiling its new observatory, but hasn’t picked a date yet, according to Bulkley. Once open, Bulkley said he plans to hold regular “star parties” where the observatory will be open to the entire community.

The observatory has been the brainchild of Bulkley, who began teaching at BCC in 1999. Upon arriving, Bulkley began working on the project — selling college officials on the idea, getting funding, picking out designs, and seeing through the construction. Ten years and $300,000 later his labor of love is finally manifest. And to protect the observatory, the college installed security cameras and tall fences around the area. “Quite a lot was spent on security,” he said.

Pugliese, who didn’t have any background in astronomy previously, said he plans on heading to the new observatory to view the stars once it opens. Bulkley’s class drew out students’ interest and curiosity, he said.

“He’s very passionate about it,” Pugliese said.

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