Telescope offers a stellar fireworks show

REHOBOTH — Calvin College's telescope at Rehoboth Christian School will play a part in the college's coverage of a NASA experiment on Monday, July 4.

According to a news release on Calvin College's Web site, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft will hurl a probe onto the surface of a comet in an effort to crack the comet's surface and expose, for the first time, the interior of a comet. The probe weighs about 820 pounds and is about the size of a table. When the probe hits the comet's nucleus at about 23,000 miles per hours, it is expected to cause a crater ranging in size from a large house up to the size of a football stadium and from two to 14 stories deep.

The moment of impact is scheduled for approximately 1:52 a.m. Eastern Time on July 4.

Calvin College's astronomy department will be offering public observations on both July 3 and July 4. The first observation will be at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 3 for a pre-impact view of the comet. At about 1 a.m. on Monday, July 4, the astronomy department will switch to live images from the Rehoboth telescope, which will be able to track the comet for an hour past the time of impact.

Later on July 4, from 10:30 p.m. to midnight, another observation from the Grand Rapids observatory will allow the public to view the post-collision "fireworks." If the skies over Michigan are not clear, the Rehoboth telescope will feed images to the Michigan audience.

For more information, visit the Calvin College website.