Astronomy at Williams College spans the very old and the very new. The Hopkins Observatory is the oldest existing astronomical observatory in the United States and houses the earliest telescope by the famous maker Alvan Clark, whose company ultimately made the still-largest refracting telescope. At the same time, current astronomy faculty and students carry out research with some of the world’s most advanced telescopes.
The Department offers courses for both majors and non-majors. Many astronomy courses take advantage of on-campus observing facilities that include a 24-inch computer-controlled telescope with CCD detectors for imaging and spectroscopy, along with our computer network for image processing. Specialized telescopes for observing the Sun are adjacent.
Students interested in majoring may choose either to be an Astrophysics major, administered jointly with the Physics Department, or an Astronomy major. The Department’s learning objectives and student achievement goals are stated here.
Our students participate broadly in faculty research. In addition, Williams College is a member of the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, comprised of astronomy faculty and students from eight liberal arts colleges in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Among KNAC’s activities are a summer exchange program for astronomy research students and a fall student research symposium. Williams College also participates in the educational aspects of the Zwicky Telescope Facility of Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, which links the 200″, 60″ and 48″ telescopes on Palomar Mountain for time-domain astronomy. After you have finished browsing our pages, you might want to explore some of these other astronomy sites.
For more information on the department and its activities, please feel free to contact us directly at the address below or
- Email Prof. Anne Jaskot
- Email Dr. Kevin Flaherty
Look for us on Instagram! (@williamsastronomy)
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Prof. Pasachoff’s view of the December 4, 2021, total solar eclipse from a plane near Antarctica, with Peter Knowlton ’21 and Anna Tosolini ’23 also on board. -
Kevin Flaherty studies the conditions of planet formation using radio antennas, such as this one in Hawaii. -
Sequential views, alternately through a solar filter and through clouds, of the annular solar eclipse of December 26, 2019, from Kodaikanal, India -
Light curve observed by Dr. Steven Souza and his students showing the brightness variation of a pair of orbiting stars that regularly block each other’s light. -
Exploding stars, colliding galaxies, and you: Prof. Karen Kwitter, now Prof. Emerita, at TEDx.williams.edu -
Website developed by Profs. Karen Kwitter and Richard Henry (U. Oklahoma) with spectra, images and atlas information for more than 175 planetary nebulae they have observed in the Milky Way and M31. -
Matt Hosek '12 (Ph.D. in astronomy, U. Hawaii, now a researcher about the galactic center at UCLA), working with Karen Kwitter, explaining to fellow students how we observe with the ARC 3.5-m telescope in New Mexico using a Mac on campus. -
Sarah Stevenson '17 and Michael May '17 working on emission-line stars with Dr. Steven Souza. -
Tina Seeger '16 with the POETS occultation/eclipse/transit camera system on the 24-inch telescope in our rooftop observatory, working with Prof. Jay Pasachoff. -
Prof. Jay Pasachoff with students and alumni/alumnae at the Williams College eclipse site in Salem, Oregon, in August 2017. Left to right – Back: Cielo Perez ’19, Charles Ide ’20, Marcus Freeman ’10, Duane Lee ’01, Muzhou Lu ’13, Allen Davis ’14, Dan Seaton ’01, Declan Daly ’20, Brendan Rosseau ‘ 19 Front: Erin Meadors ’20, Ross Yu ’19, Amy Steele ’08, Connor Marti ’20, Christian Lockwood ’20 (Not shown, at our alternative site in Salem, Tim Nagle-McNaughton ‘ 18 and Suranjit Tilakawardane ’07. Nearby: Johnny Inoue ’20.) -
The Zeiss Skymaster ZKP3/C projector in the Milham Planetarium, located in the Hopkins Observatory.
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