March 2024 Monthly Adventure
This month, I decided to check out a FREE, family-friendly activity perfect for anyone who has an interest in astronomy or just has some curiosity about our planet and galaxy. The UT Austin telescope at Painter Hall presented the perfect opportunity for me to do something completely new for my blog!
Background
Wanting to focus on my goal of highlighting trips and activities that are relatively affordable, I chose to do a free activity this month. I wanted to find something unique and thought about the telescopes at The University of Texas at Austin. Sure, many people know about the McDonald Observatory out west. However, it may not be as well known that the main campus in Austin has two telescopes that are also available for public viewing at absolutely zero cost! There is a telescope on top of the Physics, Math & Astronomy (PMA) building and a second telescope on top of T.S. Painter Hall. Since I have been quite busy during the week recently and had checked out the PMA telescope as a student, I opted to view the Painter Hall telescope over the weekend instead.
Telescope Viewing Information
You can find all the details you need about attending a public telescope viewing for both the PMA telescope and the Painter Hall telescope on the UT Austin Astronomy Department website. The PMA telescope is open to the public on Wednesday evenings and the Painter telescope is publicly accessible on Friday and Saturday nights. What's great about this is that you have the option to park for free if you choose to use street parking for meters not managed by the institution! Those affiliated with the institution that have valid parking permits can park on campus, but visitors can park in the campus garages or limited campus street parking for a fee. Either way, this can be a complete free or very low cost activity for you to experience solo like I did or with others.
Experiencing the Painter Hall Telescope
I arrived at Painter Hall on Saturday at 8:15 PM and ended up at one of the entryways with locked doors. Fortunately, there are small stickers on the doors that direct people to the "celebrated entrance" on the east side of the building to reference when the door someone is attempting to use is locked. Now, I have to be honest–– getting up to the telescope was both exciting and a bit erie. A new experience is always something I look forward to and that made this exciting. I've been in Painter Hall quite a bit from classes I took when I was a student at UT Austin, but had never been inside at night on a Saturday before. The campus was empty as it tends to be on Saturday nights, and I'm pretty sure the only people in the building that night were all 10 of us or so in the observatory.
Following the directions on the website, I navigated my way through the building to get to the telescope. This building is very old and getting to the sixth floor is not easily accessible if you cannot take the stairs up to a flight from the fifth floor. That's not the only set of stairs though! After walking down a dimly lit hallways, approaching a steep and narrow staircase wrapped in red LED lights, I climbed another floor before getting to the landing with a view of the UT Tower (complete lit up in burnt orange light for Texas Independence Day) from an open "window" to my left and a small door frame to enter the circular, domed room with a very old telescope.
Inside the observatory, there are fans to help regulate the temperature, more red light, cushioned benches along the walls to sit on, and this movable wooden staircase that was wide enough for a couple of people and meant to get people up high enough to look through the lens of the telescope. The room also had posters on the wall about Jupiter, Saturn, moon phases, and other information that visitors may find interesting. There was an astronomy student in the observatory that evening who helped answer some questions about Jupiter's moons (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) that we were able to see that day and give some background on how this particular telescope works as she played some ambient jazz instrumentals on a bluetooth speaker.
After checking out the observatory for a bit, taking some pictures of the telescope, looking at Jupiter's moons, and getting a nice photo of the tower from the small "window" (which is more like a metal door the size of window), I returned to my car to make a quick Target run before the store closed. I was only at Painter Hall for maybe 15-20 minutes for this telescope viewing, but it was a peaceful and cool experience that I will definitely do again in the future –– especially if I know something particularly special will be visible!
On to the next Monthly Adventure!
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