Space Week celebrations: Observing Mount Holyoke’s past and present

Photo courtesy of Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections

A student observing the sky, while operating the Clark Refractor Telescope within the John Payson Williston Observatory at Mount Holyoke College.

By Angel Fox FP ‘26

Staff Writer

Mount Holyoke College will celebrate Massachusetts Space Week 2025 on April 24, with events from 6-10 p.m. The celebration will include ASTRO Club crafts, a solar system talk at the Gaylord Library with ASTRO Club President Latika Joshi ‘25 and an observatory open house. 

Space Week, a Massachusetts statewide celebration, was created in 2017 by The Space Consortium, a nonprofit and public charity led by space academics and researchers. Originally a collaborative effort between Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty, their mission to assist in democratizing space knowledge has spread statewide. This year, there are over 80 events across Massachusetts, connecting Massachusetts-based space experts and enthusiasts to make space accessible to all. Students interested in events outside of Mount Holyoke can access information on The Space Consortium website.

Mount Holyoke Space Week events 

Prior to the celebrations at the observatory, Mount Holyoke students are invited to attend a talk with the Society of Physics Students club with Dr. Erik Katsavounidis on April 22 in Cleveland 003L from 4:30- 6 p.m. As a senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laser Interferometer, Gravitational-Wave Observatory, Katsavounidis works directly with gravitational wave research.

On April 24, the ASTRO club will be hosting “Art and Movies at the Observatory” with crafts — such as decorating cosmic tote bags, baseball caps and mugs — as well as donuts, Poppi soda and movie screenings from 6-10 p.m. 

After making some out-of-this-world cosmic creations, students may join ASTRO president and speaker Joshi at the Gaylord Library from 7-8 p.m. to learn about our celestial home and solar system. 

Weather permitting, visitors to the Observatory will be able to look through the irreplaceable Clark refractor telescope at celestial objects from 8-10 p.m. at the John Payson Williston Observatory. 

History of the Observatory: 

Mount Holyoke’s John Payson Williston Observatory brings together the past and present of the astronomy program through a rich timeline of history and leadership. The Observatory is one of the oldest buildings on campus with over a hundred years of history and features a rare Alvan Clark refractor telescope, one of Clark’s last creations before his death in 1887, according to the Observatory’s centennial booklet from 1981. The eight-inch refracting telescope has been in continuous use since the 1880s. 

The Observatory was named after primary donor A. Lyman Williston’s eldest son, who died at the age of 14 in 1879. The Observatory’s lecture room and library were added in 1903, and the astronomy major was added to Mount Holyoke College in 1907. 

A total eclipse of the sun was observed by the entire College in 1925, where Helen Sawyer Hogg, Class of 1926 described viewing the eclipse during a school-sponsored trip to Windsor, Conn. “There, standing in snow at below zero temperatures, we had a magnificent view of one of nature’s grandest spectacles and made the observations Miss Young had diligently trained us to make.” Anne S. Young, who was born in 1871 and died in 1961, was head of the astronomy department and director of the Observatory for 37 years, after completing her Ph.D. in Astronomy at Columbia University: A unique feat for women of the time.  

Several technical improvements were made to the Observatory during her tenure, starting with lowering the Observatory floor to allow for observations at the zenith — the point directly overhead — in 1929, the same year as the discovery of the expansion of the universe. Other actions included selling the mount for the telescope to the University of Puerto Rico in 1931 to help purchase a three-inch Ross photographic lens and camera, and installing new shutters for the dome in 1932, offering a wider view for the Ross lens and camera. 

External work was completed in the 1940s to keep the surrounding hill from eroding, which included building a terrace, and a 75-year celebration occurred in the 1950s with a banquet in Brigham Hall, featuring prominent guest speakers. A Joint Four College Department of Astronomy was created in the 1960s, prior to the addition of Hampshire to create the Five College Consortium, along with the addition of a solar prominence telescope, and a 24-foot reflecting telescope in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the Observatory’s one-hundred year anniversary was celebrated. 

The Observatory today

On Oct. 21, 2022, the Observatory held an open house celebrating the addition of two motorized smart telescopes from UNISTELLAR called the EVSCOPE2. The telescope features a Nikon Eyepiece, highly sensitive digital sensor, an automatic star finder, mobile phone app, light pollution filter, and live image-processing capability with an onboard computer. Students are able to access these telescopes after a little training and can reach out to astronomy professor Thomas Burbine for more information. 

In a recent interview with Mount Holyoke News, Burbine remarked on the ease at discovering the cosmos within one’s own backyard. “There's a lot of things happening in astronomy, and we could see some of them right on campus. Sometimes, we could see the space station going above, or meteor showers, all from campus.” Students were able to view the recent partial solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 with 94% of the sun covered and the recent aurora borealis on Oct. 10 2024. Comet C/2023 A3, only seen from Earth every 80,000 years, was visible to the naked eye on Oct. 11, 2024. 

Mount Holyoke’s astronomical contribution highlights

With so many impactful contributions to astronomy, it is important to acknowledge the difficulties women in astronomy now face with the current U.S. policies regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. Recently, NASA abandoned its pledge to put women or astronauts of color on the moon through the Artemis program. In a recent interview with Mount Holyoke News, ASTRO club president Joshi states, “The recent decision by NASA’s Artemis mission to no longer send the first woman to the moon is a major setback and serves as a reminder that there is still much work to be done to ensure women’s contributions are fully recognized and celebrated.”

Historically, many prominent women from the Mount Holyoke astronomy program have contributed to scientific research and positively impacted astronomy. Elisabeth Bardwell was an MHC graduate in 1866, as well as a professor and director of the Observatory. In addition, along with serving as an astronomy department head and observatory director at the College, Anne S. Young was the founding member and president of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, a member of the American Astronomical Society and a researcher of stellar photometer asteroids and meteors. 

Additionally, Alice H. Farnsworth continued in Anne’s footsteps as the president of the VSO and taught for 37 years while researching sunspots and solar occultations, observing the 500th occultation at the Observatory following Young’s program.

More recently, Mount Holyoke alum and Professor Emerita of Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Ann Merchant Boesgaard ’61 was awarded the 2019 Henry Norris Russell Lectureship by the American Astronomical Society. The Russell Prize is the AAS’s highest award given each year for a “lifetime of eminence in astronomical research,” according to the University of Hawai’i’s website. Boesgaard’s accomplishments included the study of light elements including, lithium, beryllium and boron, within the atmospheres of stars. This research will aid in understanding the structure and evolution of stars, and the early formation of the universe.

Lauren Leese ’23 graduated from Mount Holyoke with degrees in astronomy and English, and is now a Science Data Web Content Strategist with Science Systems and Applications, Inc., where she assists NASA. Her summer at Louisiana State University included “research into the angular diameters of retired A stars for the purposes of furthering exoplanet discoveries around these stars,” according to her LinkedIn. She now communicates science with written web content and coordinates NASA’s science data-related sites.

Previous department head and Kennedy-Schelkunoff Professor of Astronomy Darby Dyar has written “more than 260 papers in scientific journals,” and has worked with NASA on the Curiosity mission, according to the Mount Holyoke website. She is retiring this year to focus on her work with NASA’s VERITAS mission as the Deputy Principal Investigator and co-lead for the mission's Venus Emissivity Mapper instrument.

Current Head of the Physics and Astronomy Department, Kerstin Nordstrom, “studies the dynamics of fluid-like materials”, often called “soft matter,” which “are commonplace in both nature and industry”and often misunderstood, according to her profile on the College’s website. Funded by an NSF CAREER award, her lab experiments use “combinations of ultra-high speed video, computational, and machine learning techniques.” 

Space Week is an important time to not only learn about astronomy, but to recognize the contributions of those working in the field and honor a piece of Mount Holyoke’s history. Students interested in learning more can attend one of the many observatory open houses, join the ASTRO or SPS clubs, or simply take a look up towards the sky and be curious.  

When considering why celebrating Space Week is so important, Joshi highlights the vast possibilities in discovery happening everyday.  

“It amazes me how, despite everything we have learned, we still know so little about the cosmos we live in. Studying objects billions of miles away, I am constantly reminded of how we are connected by the same cosmic threads. The immense scale, complexity and beauty of the universe mean there is always something new waiting to be discovered, and astronomy gives me the thrilling opportunity to explore these unknowns firsthand,” Joshi said.

Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact-checking.

Dr. Erica Jawin talks Bennu and OSIRIS-REx at Mount Holyoke

Photo by Emily Berg ’28

The rubble-pile asteroid Bennu is almost as tall as New York City’s Empire State Building; some scientists suspect that it contains organic materials.

By Emily Berg ’28

Science & Environment Editor

Mount Holyoke College’s Astronomy and Physics Speaker Seminar Series recently brought Dr. Erica Jawin ’12 to campus, who shared her experiences with NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer — shortened to OSIRIS-REx — mission, and provided inspirational glimpses into how her time at Mount Holyoke influenced her research and career.

A full house of Mount Holyoke students, faculty and staff across many departments gathered in Cleveland Hall to attend the lecture on Feb. 25. Jawin’s lecture primarily explored NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, as well as the Bennu asteroid’s “journey across the Solar System towards its current orbit, and its recent surface evolution, as well as initial perspectives from analyses of the returned sample,” according to the event description. In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Jawin shared insights into how several of her experiences at the College followed her career journey and research methods within this mission.

The OSIRIS-REx mission was a seven-year long voyage to collect and deliver a sample of ancient asteroid material to Earth. Orbiting as a near-Earth asteroid, Bennu was the “rubble-pile” target of this mission due to its “pristine and primitive” qualities as a parent body. “Rubble-pile” is a term that classifies a specific type of asteroid, a coherent parent body that was blasted apart into fragments that eventually gravitate and compress together again. Almost as tall as the Empire State Building, Bennu is suspected to contain organic and water-bearing materials from the earliest parts of the solar system, around the same time life first formed on Earth. While this material does not necessarily have biological implications, it can advance scientists’ search to uncover the role organic-rich asteroids played in catalyzing life on Earth, especially in our oceans, as much of Earth’s core geologic evidence is lost due to tectonic plate activity.

Jawin is a postdoctoral research geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where her most recent research consists of characterizing Bennu’s global geology through its boulder population. As a science team member with expertise in geomorphology and comparative planetology, Jawin is involved with several active NASA missions, including the Shallow Radar — or SHARAD — experiment on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and the OSIRIS-APEX mission to asteroid Apophis. Following her Ph.D. program at Brown University in 2018, Jawin became involved with OSIRIS-REx as a postdoctoral fellowship, wanting to apply her skills from studying the moon, Mars and Mercury into researching asteroids.

Jawin’s role in this mission was two-fold: Her job included research on Bennu through the mission itself, and performing outreach and educational roles at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. She explained that this museum component was the first time she questioned her career goals, as she found fulfillment in public interaction after considering a tenure-professor track during graduate school.

“Working with Darby Dyar and all of the fantastic professors [at Mount Holyoke College], I saw how much you could impact people's lives by being a professor, and so I thought that I wanted that,” Jawin said. She enjoyed inspiring enthusiasm in people about science, and eventually took up a second postdoctoral position at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum because of this transformational experience.

Jawin also found fulfillment in the pressure of actively working within a team on the research component of the mission. “It's this very dynamic, not necessarily high pressure, but high intensity or high stakes experience, because whatever you're doing, even if it's a very minuscule, seemingly not that important task, it can all have really impactful results … so even though I was a small component of the team, I really felt like I was a fundamental part of the team,” she said.

This aspect also proved to be one of the more challenging parts of Jawin’s experience, as working on an active mission can be unforgiving and mentally fatiguing at times. “I was part of a small group of people who helped to characterize some of the final four candidate sites, which included mapping and measuring the size of every resolvable particle in every sample site. So I was counting like tens of thousands of individual particles in a very short time scale. I literally had dreams about measuring particles: What I had just been doing all day,” Jawin said.

Additionally, the mission suffered complications in finding a safe site on Bennu to obtain a sample. High-resolution imagery, obtained after the sampling technology was developed, revealed that there were no “smooth, sandy beaches” that the instrument could land and retrieve from. Originally engineered to navigate within a 2000 square yard area on Bennu, which NASA’s website describes as about the size of a parking lot with 100 spaces, OSIRIS-REx needed to maneuver an area of less than 100 square yards — about five parking spaces worth of space on Bennu’s rocky surface.

“Do you maybe risk the spacecraft and risk breaking it in trying to collect a sample from a place that was not what the hardware was designed for, or do you not collect a sample even though the entire point of the mission was sample return?” Jawin said. Navigating this challenge required intense effort from the entire OSIRIS-REx team, as it reached a critical decision point for the continuation and success of the mission itself. “Basically every mission encounters … challenges that you didn't foresee when you proposed the mission, because you assume that everything would happen in a certain way, and so you have to be flexible and be willing to change how you're going to get things done.”

During her lecture, Jawin also explained some of the unexpected research methods she encountered in examining the sample from Bennu. One of these methods was coding, a common component of humanities research methodology, that consists of translating unstructured, qualitative data into specified categories. While analyzing the morphology of four different boulder types on Bennu’s surface, Jawin eventually realized that she was reinventing this method on her own, when she could have easily learned about this method from another source.

“It's not just to make this funny story, but also to say that qualitative research methods are critically important in all fields, because a lot of times they do get a bit maligned in the social sciences as not being as … hard or as important as quantitative methods,” she said. Her advice to student attendees at the lecture was to take a diversity of classes at the College and to embrace the liberal arts education experience, because it could develop a background of interdisciplinary research methods for students’ future careers.

Reflecting on how students can prepare for a career in planetary sciences as undergraduates, Jawin explained the importance of gaining research experience from labs or internships, taking applied foundational courses like statistics and computer science, and emphasized building a strong relationship with a professor during their time at the College.

“I have that person in the form of Darby Dyar from the Astronomy Department. She's been a huge influence in my personal life and my career, and I'm so thankful that I still have her as a resource, because I still go to her now with questions and advice about my career. So that's definitely not the kind of thing that … ends when you graduate,” Jawin said.

However, Jawin also advises Mount Holyoke students to make the most of their undergraduate experience in an enjoyable way, as students have plenty of time to develop their career beyond their time spent at Mount Holyoke.

“There's so much pressure on every single person these days to exceed in everything that you do and be perfect in everything that you do, and we've lost a lot of time to just enjoy life where we are, when we are; so my biggest piece of advice is just to enjoy being at Mount Holyoke,” Jawin said.

Madeleine Diesl ’28 contributed fact-checking.