By Claia Bryja
Astronomy Instructor at City College
claia.bryja@mail.ccsf.edu
Two summers ago, I had the pleasure of seeing my astronomy service-learning students gaze up at the night sky from the summit of Mt. Hamilton with the kind of awe and wonder that you just can’t get from within city limits.
Our “service learning” students volunteer for public outreach on the City College campus. They organize events, are trained in the operation of small telescopes and learn how to run shows in our two very different planetarium theaters.
For many of these students, the trip to Lick Observatory was the very first time they could truly witness the Milky Way as a soft band of light extending across the sky from horizon to horizon. Away from the glare of San Francisco’s lights, the sky comes alive — and with it, so does something inside each student.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and a specially created “ASTRAL Consortium,” also funded by this grant, City College students now have access to the powerful telescopes at Lick Observatory — previously reserved only for University of California researchers. ASTRAL brings together faculty from Bay Area public colleges and UC astronomers to expand opportunities for hands-on, authentic experiences in astronomy.
So far, we’ve completed four observing runs using the 40-inch Nickel Telescope at Lick. For the first two runs — June and August 2023 — we traveled in person to Mt. Hamilton. Thanks to the generous support from the former dean of STEM, David Yee (now Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs), my department chair and I were able to bring eight students up the mountain in a chartered bus for a two-night stay.
But the cost of staying on the mountain is high, and funding is limited. For our third run in September 2024, we transitioned to remote observing, operating the Lick Observatory telescope from a control room at the University of California, Berkeley. It worked beautifully, and we learned that it was possible to bring the observatory to our students without ever having to leave the Bay Area. We managed our fourth run, in February 2025, using only our personal laptops! In the future, we will be able to work directly from the City College campus, making it easier for as many students as possible to take part. Still, as the student testimonials reveal, something magical is lost when we leave the mountain behind.
Each student in our program has selected one or two specific “cataclysmic variable stars” to study. These are wild, unpredictable binary systems in which a white dwarf — a dead star core — draws material from its companion, sometimes flaring up in dramatic bursts. They’re scientifically fascinating and always full of surprises. In other words, they’re perfect targets for students doing their first real research in astronomy.
“I’ve done a lot in my life, but I’ve never been given an opportunity like this— an overnight stay at a world-renowned observatory, contributing to the science community by researching a cataclysmic binary star. It struck a chord in my heart,” student Danilo Delgado said.
Marcello Garbo said it was “a truly transformative experience,” one that “broadened my perspective on what’s possible in the field of astronomy and solidified my desire to pursue a career in STEM.”
And Abraham Hall, who only recently joined our group, was by far the most poetic in his testimonial. He described his fellow students themselves as “a cluster of stars… each one different yet special, contributing radiant light to play within the dark of night.”
These testimonials speak to the core of what ASTRAL is about: inclusion, inspiration and access. At community colleges throughout the Bay Area, ASTRAL is creating a community of learners who experience science not just as a subject to study, but as something they can do — something they belong to. Whether on a mountaintop or in a room on campus, the impact, influence and benefits to the students stay long after the telescope is powered down.