By Lillian Gray

At the beginning of the spring semester, freshman aerospace engineering major Richard Zhang decided to bring his telescope out on campus to allow people to view the night sky.

So, every once in a while, he gets on his bike and takes his telescope to the area in front of Yahentamitsi Dining Hall from sundown until around 10 p.m.

Zhang first became interested in astronomy when he was around eight years old. He went through a “Whoa, space is cool!” phase that many kids experience, but his fascination never went away.

During his freshman year of high school, Zhang began building his own telescopes. Before starting those projects, he barely knew how to use a screwdriver. But after filling his family’s garage with parts and tools for a few years, he was able to finish building his first telescope before his high school graduation.

Zhang based his self-built telescope on a design created by John Dobson, a Buddhist monk who founded the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. Dobson’s organization brought telescopes to public places, allowing anyone to see the stars for free.

Zhang not only followed Dobson’s blueprint for his telescope but was inspired to do public outreach himself. 

“Public outreach has always been a big part of astronomy,” he said. “Astronomy has a problem where it’s a really old person hobby because all of the boomers saw the space race and got inspired. But people my age … not so much. So, it’s also part of an effort to get young people our age to do it, and at least know something about it.”

The telescope he built was too difficult to transport onto campus. Instead, Zhang brings a $40 telescope he bought off Craigslist.

People are always amazed to hear that it was so inexpensive, Zhang said. When asked about how to buy one, he first points people to online astronomy apps and binoculars, explaining that’s how he started. It took him a while and a lot of research before he finally bought a telescope of his own.

According to Zhang, many people who look through his telescope have never used one before.

Once, a kid looked through the telescope and, when she saw Jupiter and its four moons, screamed “Jupiter!” up at the sky at the top of her lungs in excitement.

Another evening, an older gentleman asked Zhang whether what he was seeing was real, wondering if it was really a planet or just a computer screen.

Zhang believes that since it takes a lot of effort to get to an observatory, most people who have the chance to look through a telescope “already have an interest in it anyway.”

“Someone bringing a telescope out is probably the only way most people get to do it, so somebody’s got to do it,” Zhang said.

One night, when he pointed his telescope at the moon, a girl approached him, explaining how special the moon was to her. When she looked through the lens at what Zhang considered a horrible view of the moon, she began screaming with excitement.

She was “over the moon about it. Pun intended,” Zhang said.

“It’s easy to get tired after standing out and about for three hours, but when I get those reactions, I remember why I’m out there on some cold night with other things I could be doing,” he said. “That reminds me, ‘Yeah, this is why I came out here.’ I get a few really good reactions every time or so, and those always make the night.”

Although looking through his telescope is completely free, and he expects nothing in return, a small corner of a whiteboard he brings with him states that tips are welcome.

Inspired by Zhang’s mission, sophomore international relations and Russian major Zachary Cecere left a tip for him.

“It certainly was a really great thing to do and just a really pleasant surprise,” Cecere said. “When you go out here on this nice cold night, just to give the chance to see a planet and just bring a little bit of joy to the day-to-day lives of people, I think that’s a really valuable thing.”

For Cecere, the experience is more than just a chance to get a closer look at our galaxy.

“You look up at the sky, and you just see a dot there, you know, you think it’s a star and yet it’s something much more complicated and something much more beautiful and fascinating,” he said.

What started as a goal to show his peers the night sky has turned into a community-building experience. Zhang has learned by being out there that people do care.

“I wasn’t fully expecting for a sort of community to form, but I wasn’t fully surprised by it either,” Zhang said. “The first time I did this, I was super nervous. The whole first hour before I was going, I was deliberating, ‘What if people don’t like it? What if people don’t care?’”

Sophomore mechanical engineering major Sapphire Grader-Beck first noticed a big crowd surrounding the telescope one night and knew she had to check it out. When she was younger, her dad would occasionally bring out a telescope, so it was a familiar sight to see.

“Having something fun that you like to do and sharing that with other people is really special,” Grader-Beck said. “It’s not something that you expect to see, so it’s definitely something that catches your eye, and you’re like, ‘What’s this about?’”

Grader-Beck looked through the telescope a few times before and tries her best to do so every time she sees Zhang outside Yahentamitsi Dining Hall.

“It’s a great location because people are always over here,” she said. “I just think it’s a fun way to meet people, and also it’s so cool to see whatever he’s pointing it at.”

Freshman information science major Matthew De Leon said looking through the telescope and speaking to Zhang and others about astronomy increased his curiosity about the subject. 

“I really love the unity in regards to astronomy,” De Leon said. “There is no one astronomer, even though we have a lot of famous astronomers like Galileo or Archimedes, we know that sometimes people don’t do these things alone. We know that it always takes a collaborative process in order to move our universe forward and see our ever-expanding universe.”

Zhang also educates people about the negative effects of light pollution, especially when discussing how the bright campus lights affect viewing.

Zhang plans to continue bringing his telescope to Yahentamitsi Dining Hall whenever the weather is nice and he’s available. He is also working on plans to bring out the large telescope he built, although he’ll need more than just a bike to transport it, and many of the people he’s met have offered to help him. 

Building telescopes, educating his peers and continuing to learn about astronomy and the universe have become fun and engaging ways for Zhang to stay connected to astronomy.

“Even though I’m still young, it feels like I’ve been going through this for a long while, so I haven’t actually stopped and asked myself, ‘What am I doing all of this for?’” he said. “Because you know the usual answer would be like ‘I want to see the universe, I want to see the stars.’”

But for Zhang, it’s more than that.

“Astronomy is just what I do,” he said. “Why do I do it? I don’t really know. It’s just a part of me.”

Featured Image: Freshman aerospace engineering major Richard Zhang looks through the telescope he began building his freshman year of high school. Photo by Lillian Gray.