Those who would like to study the night sky can turn to the Jacksonville library for help.
Through a partnership between the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society and the Central Arkansas Library System, the Esther D. Nixon Library, 703 W. Main St. in Jacksonville, has a telescope available for checkout, along with all 14 CALS branches.
Jacksonville branch manager Cindy Powell said the telescope has been available for a few months and has remained popular among patrons. The telescope is an Orion Starblast, and each library has one available for checkout.
“It gives our patrons access to equipment that most of them would not normally have,” Powell said.
Darrell Heath, Central Arkansas Astronomical Society outreach coordinator, said partnerships between astronomical societies and local libraries have been in place in New Hampshire and Missouri for years. A NASA-funded grant through the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium made the telescopes available at no cost to CALS and the society.
“We want to get more people engaged in the hobby of amateur astronomy,” Heath said. “We want to get them out and looking up. We also want to foster an interest in science literacy and make people aware of the problem of light pollution. We tend to light up our night sky in various inappropriate ways.”
Patrons must be 18 to check out the telescope, which they can borrow for up to 14 days, like library books, and must sign a use agreement. A bill of $500 will be charged for overdue telescopes.
The telescope comes with a user guide to inform patrons how to best use and care for the equipment.
“It’s [information] provided where you can clean the lenses and use their guide and everything that you would need to use with instructions, especially with younger kids, like never looking into the sun and things like that,” Powell said.
Heath said telescope users can visit caasastro.org for more information on how to use the scopes and what to look for in the night sky.
“Rather than using glass lenses, it’s using a 4 1/2-inch mirror to gather light,” he said of the equipment. “We’ve added zoom eyepieces with them so patrons don’t have to remove an eye piece. [They] change a wheel for magnification.”
Powell said the telescopes have remained popular since the library announced it would have them. There is currently a waiting list for the telescopes.
“We had people requesting them before they were actually ready,” she said. “Ours has stayed constantly checked out. All 14 of the telescopes are checked out.”
Many individuals who check out the telescope do so for stargazing and are thrilled with the experience of using the equipment, Powell said.
“A lot of them are just amateur astronomers that just do stargazing at night, and sometimes, periodically, stargazing classes are offered [through the Astronomical Society],” she said. “Recently, within the last month or so, they had one in Hillcrest Hall [in Little Rock]. People can come out at night and use the telescope and get basic instruction on what to look for.”
Heath said there are no specific plans for providing more telescopes at CALS libraries; doing so would require more funding.
Unlike books, which can be checked out from any CALS branch and returned to any branch, telescopes must be checked out and returned to the same library.
“That’s the only item we do that with,” Powell said. “We ask patrons, when they check them out, to seat-belt them in their car and make sure they’re not jostled around.”
The partnership with the Central Arkansas Astronomical Society isn’t the only partnership that provides nonreading materials to patrons. Through a collaboration with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, fishing poles are available at every CALS branch. Engraving pens, jigsaw puzzles and video games are also available for checkout.
“To me, it’s access,” Powell said. “We have a lot of people here who use our library that once they find out, for instance, about the fishing poles, they stay checked out. It’s just access to things that you don’t have. A lot of people are surprised we have something like fishing poles or engraving poles; they don’t expect it.”
For more information, visit ltp.caasastro.org.
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.