“In space news: the SpaceX rocket blew up again,” Astronomy Club president Mia Bridges ’25 said.
The club members scattered in Small Hall 122 nodded attentively. One person laughed. The College of William and Mary’s Astronomy Club provides an outlet for students who love space at a school without an astronomy major.
“I tell people I’m a physics major because William and Mary doesn’t have astronomy,” Bridges said. “I think I know a couple of people doing cosmology, but we don’t have a whole lot of astronomy academic research.”
Astronomy Club secretary Libby McClough ’26 agreed, explaining that the College has no astronomy research labs.
“If we had them, I would definitely be doing them,” McClough said.
Bridges said she’d planned on joining the club since before her freshman year.
“I wanted to do astronomy research since I took an intro-level astronomy class in high school,” Bridges said. “I saw Astronomy Club on Tribe Link when I was considering coming here, like four years ago, and knew, ‘Oh I’m going to do that.’”
McClough appreciates how the club allows her to keep learning about astronomy.
“I like to learn about space. I read astronomy books, I watch documentaries. This is super nerdy, but sometimes I’ll read scientific articles,” McClough said.
After Bridges’s announcements at the meeting, the club watched “Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine,” a Netflix documentary episode about the development and launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021.
“I thought it was a really good documentary,” McClough said. “It’s so inspirational. It takes you out of your head a little bit. I’m stressed about my homework and everything, and this is like: it doesn’t matter. We’re just on a rock.”
Varshini Gourishetty ’27 agreed that peacefulness was what she liked about space.
“It’s very philosophical,” Gourishetty said. “But when you’re overwhelmed with the world around you, your work, and you just think about how there’s billions of light years of the most beautiful things in existence out there – I think that just makes life so much more meaningful.”
Gourishetty reflected on how she had felt when the James Webb telescope’s photographs were first released to the public in July 2022.
“When those pictures came out, it was everything. Especially the galaxy cluster picture – oh my god, it blew my mind,” Gourishetty said.
An Astronomy Club meeting could involve seeing these galaxies. Along with presentation nights and guest speakers, Astronomy Club hosts monthly stargazing nights.
“Getting to use actually decent telescopes to go stargazing is super cool,” Bridges said. “We see so much cool stuff up there. We’ve seen all the rings of Saturn, we’ve seen Jupiter and its moons, we’ve seen the craters of our moon.”
Although McClough conceded the telescopes are nice, the club misses having an observatory.
“Our observatory’s been broken for years. We’ve tried in the past to raise money to fix it, but it would cost a lot,” McClough said. “The school doesn’t want to put in the money because we don’t have a professor focused on astronomy, but we won’t have a professor focused on astronomy if we don’t have a telescope.”
McClough is particularly interested in astrobiology, the study of life on other planets. She is double majoring in biology and computational applied mathematics, both of which she sees as connected to astronomy.
“I had such trouble picking my major when I was applying to college because to me, biology and astronomy are the same way of thinking — it’s just life, you ask the same questions. I don’t think they should be separate fields,” McClough said. “I feel like they’re pretty similar. You’re trying to learn more about humans and where we came from and our origins. It’s about curiosity about what we are and the world around us.”
Gourishetty, who is majoring in finance, also sees space as interdisciplinary.
“I grew up mixing religion and science,” Gourishetty said. “It’s very common for people to see science and religion as two separate entities, but they’re the same thing, in many cases. If you believe in religion, there’s this idea that the universe runs on energy, or God, but they’re the same thing. It’s all perspective.”
Gourishetty added that everyone has their own beliefs and these beliefs should be respected. For Gourishetty, when she looks at the sky, she says she feels the energies of the universe.
“I mean, our bodies are 70% stardust. Our bodies are made out of the cosmos, we are literally the same – as cliche as that sounds – as the stars,” Gourishetty said.
Gourishetty, too, had wished to major in astronomy before coming to the College, and participated in a Columbia University astrophysics program. Now, she says she doesn’t see herself doing astrophysics.
“I love astronomy, I love space, but I don’t see myself doing astrophysics. But you know, one can dream,” Gourishetty said.
McClough wishes the school gave more attention to astronomy, but she ended optimistically, encouraging more people to attend club meetings.
“I guess the takeaway is: come to the club so we can build a stronger community, and then maybe we can fix the observatory,” McClough said.
Astronomy Club meets on Thursdays at 8 p.m. in Small Hall 122. Weather permitting, the next stargazing meeting is scheduled for March 20. Make sure to follow Astronomy Club’s instagram @wmastroclub for future updates and announcements.
