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Constable: Teens eclipse expectations for observatory

Spying the rings of Saturn through the main telescope certainly inspires viewers, but the appreciation for the awesomeness of our galaxy begins on the ground outside Harper College's observatory in Palatine, where high school docents erect a series of yard signs along the sidewalk.

“We have a 1-to-10-billion scale model of the solar system, in size and distance,” says Joe Kabbes, Harper's astronomy outreach coordinator at the Karl G. Henize Observatory.

“The sun is a ball about the size of a large grapefruit,” he says as he leaves the sun sign and strides past the nearby Mercury sign to point out a more familiar planet. “Earth is the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.”

Using a surveyor's measuring wheel, the teen docents put each planet in its place.

“Neptune ends up way over on the other side of campus,” Kabbes says, waving in the direction where the volunteers disappear into the dusk of the actual setting sun. The downgrading of Pluto from planetary status saves the docents from having to cross busy Roselle Road to keep the galaxy to scale.

“To the best of my knowledge, we are the only college observatory in the country that is primarily staffed with middle- and high-school students,” Kabbes says. Taking over operations of the observatory nearly four years ago, Kabbes knew he needed help.

“A lot of our volunteers had moved on, so I started recruiting middle- and high-school students to help us out here at the observatory, and it's been a phenomenal success,” Kabbes says. “These kids are just wonderful. They learn astronomy. They learn a little bit of physics. They learn public speaking. They learn science demonstrations and how to run the telescopes. They actually make our program possible.”

Every other Saturday night from March to November, about 20 docents set up an astronomy program, which is free and open to the public at the observatory on the northeast part of the Harper campus.

“When I was little, we found out the observatory was here,” says Alexandria Kapko, 14, of Palatine. “I came here every other week until I could be a docent, and I love it.”

Proclaiming that she loves everything about the observatory and astronomy, Alexandria says the views of Saturn are particularly nice.

“You can see the rings in very beautiful detail. It doesn't look real. It looks like you're looking at a picture,” she says.

“I think some of the dwarf galaxies are pretty cool,” says Alex Knox, 16, a junior at Fremd High School who joined the docent program last spring.

“Everything here is really cool,” says Katya Gozman, 16, a junior at Hersey High School who started volunteering at the observatory as an eighth-grader. “One of the coolest things is M-13. It's a globular cluster, and it's beautiful.”

One of the most-senior volunteers, Margot Dick of Hoffman Estates, learned about the docent program at her elementary school's astronomy day but was told she was too young. “I learned about it in sixth grade, but I couldn't start until seventh,” says the now-15-year-old sophomore at Barrington High School.

The girl was so eager to begin, she came up to Kabbes during her summer vacation and said, “I'm not in sixth grade anymore,” the coordinator remembers.

“This was the first thing I found that I could really do in the community,” says Margot. “I get to run the telescopes and tell people what we're seeing. The fact that we know all these things is fantastic.”

The docents often write their own scripts and help design the programs, says Kabbes, who also started a Cosmic Explorers group for children in grades three through six.

On Thursday, the observatory will host a special sky show from 4 to 6 p.m. to watch the partial solar eclipse, which should give suburbanites a colorful show of the moon covering a bit of the sun.

While people are warned against looking at the sun with the naked eye, the observatory features scopes with special sun filters that make it safe. The docents, of course, will be able to explain the phenomenon, Kabbes says.

“We can show people enough interesting things and explain interesting things,” Kabbes says, “and the docents make it all work for us.”

  Without the professional staffing needed to man Harper College's Henize Observatory, astronomy outreach coordinator Joe Kabbes sought help from teens in middle school and high school. The result is a thriving docent program that will host a partial solar eclipse exhibit on Thursday just before sunset. Burt Constable/bconstable@dailyherald.com
  Pointing out the 14-inch telescope inside the Henize Observatory, outreach coordinator Joe Kabbes says Harper College might be the only college in the nation with an observatory manned by volunteer teen docents from local middle schools and high schools. Burt Constable/bconstable@dailyherald.com
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