Last Thursday, students participated in one of their last opportunities to spend A Night with the Stars at the UC Irvine Observatory.

Brendan Yu | New University

Hosted by ASUCIs Department of Academic Affairs in collaboration with the Department of Astronomy, Thursday marked the second to last opportunity for Anteaters to visit the observatory, which is being relocated next year to make way for future housing developments.

Over 500 undergraduates made their way toward the outskirts of campus via campus shuttles, which ran throughout the night, to visit the observatory before its moved to an off-campus location.

The first Night with the Stars, held back in fall attracted only 200 visitors, so the number of attendees came as a pleasant surprise to the students and faculty who worked to plan the event.

As soon as the e-mail came out, we got over 500 RSVPs overnight. Its great, and its definitely unexpected in the sense of how passionate students actually are about going on a little field trip to discover something they have never seen before, Skyla Zhang, the vice-president of ASUCIs Academic Affairs, said.

Tim Carleton, the observatorys director of outreach, kicked off the evening with a talk that explained the functions of the observatory as well as some basic concepts about astronomy and space.

According to Carleton, the telescope is typically only used for educational and community outreach purposes, as it isnt powerful enough to conduct research with.

Because its a smaller telescope, its a great telescope to learn on, Carleton said. If youre a young, developing astronomer you can do some interesting projects that dont require as vast an amount of resources that some of the bigger projects require.

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Starry Eyed for Last Time