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Trip to Sheshan Observatory

December 18, 2020

On December 12th, the club members of Astronomy Club at SHSID all met up at the Sheshan metro station and prepared for their first club outing activity.

The club members first encountered the statues outside of the gallery walk, with interesting structures of past astronomical advancements. This includes ancient star-mapping machines, the different ways of ancient time-recording, and the first advancements of sun dials. This led to the gallery walk on the stairs, which spiraled up on the way to the large telescope at the top.

The gallery walk included many of the research results of past astronomers from various points in mankind’s history. It showed the lifeline of Galileo, and the discoveries of Kepler-Tycho Brahe. Then, on the side, there was a dome where a spectacular immersive video played in a surround-sound room. It explained a lot of astronomy’s concepts and laws, covering the history of astronomical discoveries and also the history of the telescope.

Lastly, the telescope, once the largest telescope of China, showed the progression of the reflection telescope. The tower structure could rotate about the center of the room, with the top of the building being capable of opening up and spinning as well. After the telescope began to fall behind the advancing speed of technology, the observatory installed motors and buttons to facilitate the precise measuring of the night sky.

The Astronomy Club members had a wonderful time together, indulging in their collective passion for astronomy, also seeing first-hand the structure of observatories. They were brought closer together as a team and look forward to the upcoming events in the following weeks.

(Written and Pictures by William Li Supervised by Jialong Liu)