Behlen Observatory's final spring public night is April 12

            The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Behlen Observatory near Mead will be open to the public from 7:30 to 10 p.m. April 12. It will be the observatory's final public night of the spring semester.

            Provided the sky is clear, visitors will be able to view a variety of objects with the 30-inch telescope and with smaller telescopes set up outside. These include the moon, Jupiter, star clusters and double stars. At 8 p.m., a member of the observatory staff will present a program on the discovery of other solar systems.

            At this time of year it is possible to see both open clusters and globular clusters with the 30-inch telescope. An open cluster is a clump of several hundred or several thousand relatively young stars. Most are no more than a few hundreds of millions of years old. On the other hand, globular clusters contain hundreds of thousands of extremely old stars. In the telescope, the two types of clusters look quite different. Open clusters have no definite shape and the stars appear relatively bright. In contrast, globular clusters are quite round and their stars are so faint and numerous that they blend together into a continuous glow.

            There is no admission charge for the public night. Further information, including maps and directions to the observatory, can be found on the observatory website, http://astro.unl.edu/observatory.

Writer: Edward Schmidt