Pleasant Valley offers many different clubs and organizations ranging from Art Club to Spartan Assembly. One of the forty clubs PV has to offer is Astronomy Club. The club’s main goal is to “strive to educate students about the universe beyond the standard physics curriculum.”
Throughout the duration of the year, students participating in the club “will visit local planetariums and observatories, perform their own observations, and explore celestial bodies and astronomical events”. Ian Spangenberg, advisor of PV’s astronomy club, hopes to introduce astronomy to students as not only a hobby but an opportunity for future study.
“The main goal of the club is to promote amature astronomy and the study of the night sky and a appreciation of what’s out there. Astronomy helps to understand where you are, not just your address in terms of your city and state and country, but your cosmic address of where you are in the universe. To place ourselves among the cosmos is a very humbling experience. To see how little of the universe we control, it puts things into perspective and getting that perspective is very important.
It’s engaging to know we are part of larger than we can imagine structures, and it’s fun to understand those things. Trying to bring that understanding and fun to kids is really exciting. One of the hard parts about astronomy is it’s hard to know where to get started. I hope what this club does is give kids a starting place, and show them how you find resources to understand more and work a telescope and find things in the sky.”
Ely Adams, a PV senior who attended the club last year said, “My favorite part was getting to ask whatever questions I had about the universe, and Mr. Spangenberg would try his best to answer it. The best field trips were definitely the observation nights. Looking through a high power space telescope is really mind blowing.”
“Last year I learned a ton of stuff about the current status of NASA’s Mars exploration missions. An actual representative from the mission came to our school to give a presentation on rocket missions. I would absolutely recommend joining astronomy club even if you can only come to the field trips. The information is fascinating and discussions about the universe are captivating.”
Even with his busy schedule with sports and school, Adams was still able to attend field trips and meetings which are held every Thursday after school. Even if you can’t come to the Thursday meetings any student can be apart of Spangenberg’s email list and can receive field trip information. If you have an interest in astronomy and learning more about it, be sure to check out the Astronomy club this Thursday!
