Come see this, live! Photo by TopTechWriter.Us on Flickr, Licensed under the Creative Commons.

Dearborn Observatory is a place that everyone seems to know about yet no one seems to go to, at least not voluntarily. It’s small but mighty, hidden by trees and constantly resisting the omnipresent threat of being swallowed by the ever-expanding Tech. Every Friday night, Dearborn’s open door offers a live look at the immediate known universe, of countless stars and planets that are only seen on the internet and Star Trek reruns. Yet it’s rare that Northwestern students think to themselves, “Man, I am allowed free access to one of the largest telescopes in the country! Maybe I should venture into that building.” In the spirit of space adventures, after three years of keeping my head down to hide from the winter, I picked up my eyes to see one of the greatest sights Northwestern has to offer, and one that no student should miss out on.

Besides the posters of astrophysics and far away nebulae, Dearborn boasts a surprisingly antiquated decor: a dusty safe containing important keys and papers sits at the bottom of stairs that wind up to an equally dusty observatory. A single desk with two monitors controls the enormous white telescope that forces the eye to travel upwards and makes the few stars that shine on Evanston all the more appealing. An ancient step-ladder sits on a track so it can be moved to follow the telescope. In fact, if you take out the computers, the room seems to be untouched since its construction in 1888.

In addition to its structural individuality, Dearborn possesses an uncanny ability to attract attention that leads to no action. It opens its doors to us every week, offering a rare glimpse of our galaxy, and yet Northwestern students rarely look up from the ground, let alone look up at the sky. This past winter it offered unique views of Saturn and its moons to an audience of mostly birthday parties, Boy Scout troops, senior citizens and Evanston residents. The closest many of us get to Dearborn is Michael Smutko’s uber-popular class, Modern Cosmology. I took the class last year, and found myself wanting to enroll in it a second time. It was more like a trip to the planetarium than a lecture, and it seemed frivolous of Professor Smutko to offer extra credit for visiting the observatory. You want to give me more credit for looking through a gigantic telescope at wicked cool pictures of deep space? What’s next? Extra credit for eating yet another buffalo chicken wrap? If you ever become tired of this winter/spring haze Chicago has kept us in, and seriously, who hasn’t, and feel perturbed by the natural world in general, try looking at the stars for a while and see what the final frontier has to offer.

Despite Professor Smutko’s attempts to arouse interest in a fascinating subject, students rarely go outside of mandatory class. One of the benefits of our absurdly expensive school is that we have access to absurdly over-the-top pieces of equipment like Dearborn’s state-of-the-art telescope. Every Friday, from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m., you have the chance to poke your head above the fog of everyday life and get a perspective on our world from a greater context. There is rarely a line for the telescope and in exchange for only a few minutes of your time, you can see the universe from an entirely new perspective. That’s right, the whole universe. Shouldn’t we make the most of our tuition dollars? Shouldn’t you know why those planets that surround us are described as “heavenly bodies”?

Astronaut and Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine alumnus Michael Barratt brought a Northwestern banner into outer space when he left for the International Space Station on March 26, and he is planning to return with the banner after he lands. Even if you can’t be like Mike and bring a little bit of NU to the solar system, you can bring a little bit of the great unknown back down every Friday, free of charge.