Pollution Brings Telescope Back to Women's College

Contacts:

Arthur Bowling
Associate Professor of Chemistry at Agnes Scott College
404-638-6276

Dolly Purvis
Campus News Office
404-638-5451
[email protected]

Pollution Brings Telescope Back to Women's College

After dirty skies ended its star-gazing days--and drove it away from its observatory--a decade ago, a 30-inch Beck telescope will return to Agnes Scott College in early August. Its new mission? Ironically, to study atmospheric pollution.

In 1989, the telescope was moved from the women's college in Decatur, Ga., to a Georgia State University research facility. With its return, students and faculty from Agnes Scott and Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) will team up on experiments in atmospheric physics and atmospheric chemistry.

The physical location of Agnes Scott College (beneath a major flight path for aircraft and with a clear view of the air above nearby Atlanta) makes it an appealing location for LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) technology that GTRI developed. With around 700 students, Agnes Scott is one of the few colleges of its size to have a free-standing observatory. Its Bradley Observatory was built in 1949.

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