On the second Sunday of each month during the academic year, a modest limestone building tucked among the trees on the Indiana University Kokomo campus opens its dome to anyone who walks up. There is no ticket, no fee, no reservation. On the evening of Sunday, October 11, the doors open at 8 p.m. for the Observatory's free monthly open house, and the program follows a familiar rhythm: a talk about something happening in astronomy right now, followed by the chance to actually look through the eyepiece.
This month's topic is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which launched August 30 and is now making its way toward a point about a million miles from Earth. Patrick Motl, professor of physics, will lead the discussion. The Roman telescope is designed to map the cosmos and solve major mysteries involving dark energy and exoplanets.
The telescope's name honors a woman who spent decades making space astronomy possible. Nancy Grace Roman was NASA's first chief of astronomy and its first female executive. She is remembered as the "mother of Hubble" for her foundational role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope bearing her name carries Hubble's sharpness but a field of view at least 100 times larger, letting it capture vast swaths of sky in a single exposure. It has an unusual origin story of its own: the spacecraft was initially designed as a spy telescope for the National Reconnaissance Office before being donated to NASA. In a fitting bit of symmetry, the Roman telescope is expected to survey billions of galaxies over its lifetime.
When the presentation ends, the evening turns outward. Weather permitting, visitors may be able to see Saturn, the Andromeda galaxy, the Ring and Dumbbell nebulae, and the Wild Duck Cluster. The viewing runs through 10 p.m.
The instruments doing the work are a matched pair mounted together: a six-inch Takahashi refracting telescope and a 16-inch Meade reflecting telescope. The division of labor is deliberate. The Takahashi, a refractor, delivers exceptionally sharp images of planets, which is why Saturn and its rings tend to be the showstopper on a clear night. The Meade, with its much larger light-collecting area, reaches fainter and more distant objects, the kind of dim smudges of light that resolve into galaxies and nebulae only after your eye adjusts. Between the two, a single visitor can move from a crisp view of a nearby planet to the glow of a galaxy millions of light-years away without leaving the room.
The Observatory itself has a story worth telling. Before it was built, IU Kokomo astronomy faculty mostly conducted their observations from windows or from the roof of the campus's East Building. The current facility, a 2,208-square-foot structure faced with natural uncut limestone from Monroe County, changed that, giving the campus a proper home for astronomy and a gateway for the surrounding community. The building includes a classroom where Motl and others give their pre-viewing talks, and the dome houses the telescopes.
That public-facing mission has been the Observatory's defining feature. The monthly open houses are a long-running tradition, though not an uninterrupted one. After a year-long hiatus, the free monthly gatherings returned in the fall of 2021, when Motl welcomed stargazers back and noted that it had "been good to use our astronomy facilities again with the public." Since then the series has rolled on, with each open house built around a fresh topic: the James Webb Space Telescope after its Christmas Day launch, the search for atmospheres on distant planets, a NASA satellite's discovery of a planet being torn apart by its host star, even a discussion of light pollution and SpaceX's Starlink satellites. The format rarely changes, and that is the point. A professor talks about what is new in the sky, and then everyone goes outside to look at the sky itself.
For a community in north-central Indiana, the appeal is straightforward. Astronomy can feel like a pursuit reserved for people with expensive equipment or a research affiliation. The Observatory's open houses dissolve that barrier. The telescopes are professional-grade, the expertise is real, and the price of admission is nothing. On a clear October night, with Saturn hanging in the evening sky and the Andromeda galaxy waiting in the dark, the gap between a classroom lecture and the actual universe closes in the space of a few minutes.
The Observatory is at 2660 S. Washington Street in Kokomo. Free parking is available on campus. The event begins at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 11, with observation continuing until 10 p.m., weather permitting.