Stars shine bright at USQ's Mt Kent

Thirty years of astronomy at USQ was celebrated recently when members of the USQ Council and the community had an up-close look of the night sky through the telescopes of the University's Mt Kent Observatory.

Situated near Wyreema, Mt Kent observatory’s three domes are quickly developing a reputation as Queensland’s astronomical centre with the installation of high powered and robotically controlled telescopes.

Apart from its use as an off-campus teaching laboratory Mt Kent also plays a central role in the teaching of astronomy both in Australia and the United States.

Senior Lecturer in Physics and Director of Mt Kent Observatory, Dr Brad Carter, said that USQ had developed a close association with NASA and also with the University of Louisville in Kentucky in the United States to allow students from both countries to have remote access to the centre’s telescopes.

The collaborative effort allows distance education students to connect to Mt Kent via their computer or mobile phone and operate telescopes remotely, while students in the US are able to access Australian night skies through the internet.

Because of the differences between the earth’s northern and southern hemispheres the Mt Kent Observatory is used to offer students a way of observing otherwise inaccessible skies, and to observe night skies on the other side of the world during day time classes.

'Students submit requests through a simple web page and, if the sky is clear, have the images emailed to them 15 minutes later,' Dr Carter said.

'At times the Observatory takes hundreds of images a night with some students even using their iPhones to gain access to the stars and planets.'

The Observatory houses several manual and robotically controlled telescopes with aperture ranges from 0.3 metres through to half a metre in diameter. Later this year a 0.7m aperture telescope will be installed to provide an even deeper and more extensive reach into the terrestrial sky.

The Observatory also has an asteroid named after it. Discovered in 1993, asteroid ‘11927 Mount Kent’ is currently in the constellation of Leo.