An impressive light show from a galaxy far, far away

“When the light we’re now seeing left that galaxy, people as we know them did not exist,’’ said Doyle, a visiting lecturer at Bridgewater State College. “People had not evolved.’’

Andromeda makes Doyle’s Top 5 list of observable space objects with “wow power,’’ which he likes to show off on public viewing nights at the school’s telescope observatory. “I like the Andromeda galaxy a lot. It’s an old friend I look at every time it happens to be in a good position for viewing.’’

Doyle is curator of the Bridgewater State College observatory, and oversees its public hours program, which is in the middle of its summer season. Three of the school’s telescopes - a 12-inch scope and two 8-inchers - are available at the observatory for free public stargazing every clear Wednesday evening through July 29. The observatory is a squat domed building that looks like a grain silo in a dirt parking lot off Summer Street. Doyle and his assistants will be available during public hours to answer questions and run the equipment.

“The point of the program is to show people the wonder of what’s right over their head,’’ said Doyle. “I start by telling people that it’s 100,000 light years across. The light getting to you from the near side of the Andromeda galaxy is 100,000 years younger than the light coming from the far side. It’s one of the few galaxies that isn’t moving away from us. Gravity is slowly drawing it toward our galaxy. In several billion years, there will be a collision. There’s a wow factor in what I can tell people when they look at it.’’

This is Doyle’s Top 5 list of viewable space objects with wow power:

◼The moon: “It’s huge, close, and you can see incredible amounts of detail even with a small telescope. The moon provides an endless variety of features to look at. It’s something we touched. Humans have been there. Humans will be back there.’’

◼Saturn: “It has rings, it’s not symmetrical, it’s weird. It’s the first object I ever looked at through a big scope. It wowed me then and still even wows me now. Each time we put Saturn in the telescope I get someone who says I must have put a picture in there, that it can’t be real.’’

◼Jupiter: “It’s huge, relatively close, and you can see lots of detail in the atmosphere. There are names for dozens of different types of features that appear and can disappear while you’re watching. It has large moons, and if you have a big enough telescope you can sometimes identify them by the color.’’

◼The Orion Nebula: “It’s a naked-eye object. You can see it as a faint fuzzy star. With a telescope it suddenly looks like a rising phoenix or an eagle. Even with a moderate-sized telescope you can see color. It has wisps and tendrils. The nebula represents a stellar nursery, the place where stars are born.’’

◼Andromeda: “Another object you can see with the naked eye. It’s a faint fuzz if you know where to look for it and the skies are sufficiently dark.’’

Doyle, 41, took a roundabout path to overseeing the observatory. He attended Bridgewater State as a student in the early 1990s. Then he worked from 1996 to 2003 as a “Colonial interpreter’’ at Plimoth Plantation, employed as a Pilgrim. He returned to Bridgewater State in 2004 to teach courses in geology and astronomy.

Doyle had long been an amateur astronomer with his own scope, and he radiates a deep passion about looking at things in space. He recalls fondly one perfect night in the 1990s when the skies were just right and he could make out the color in Andromeda. “It was a spectacular and astounding view I have not been able to repeat.’’

He thinks photos taken by the Hubble telescope or by deep space satellites are lovely, but maintains that pictures cannot compare to seeing something for yourself. “It’s the difference between taking a vacation and looking at a place on the Internet,’’ he said.

“When you look through a telescope, your eyes are collecting the photons, the little bits of light energy, that have been reflected off certain objects and emitted by other objects.’’ That light energy passes through glass in the scope - “so looking through a telescope is like looking out a window.’’

“The thrill for me sometimes is in seeing things I’ve never seen before. When I’m on my patio with my own little telescope, there’s the thrill of the hunt. In some ways living in a light-polluted area, that can be part of the fun and the challenge.’’

One of Doyle’s assistants, David Spalding, 49, is studying molecular biology at Bridgewater State after a career in computer programming. Spalding, a lifelong telescope enthusiast, built his first scope when he was 13.

Looking deep into space offers a viewer “the sheer raw pleasure of knowing the light you’re looking at is your unique experience,’’ said Spalding. “No one else is going to see this light that has traveled so long to meet your eye. You’ve stopped your regular humdrum day to take time out and contemplate reality in the largest scale possible. And that’s unique. To have a mind that’s able to contemplate such a range of things is wonderful.’’

The Bridgewater Observatory’s public nights begin at 8:30 p.m. on clear-sky Wednesdays. If you’re unsure about the weather, call the observatory hotline, 508-531-DARK, one hour before the session. More information is available at the observatory’s website, www.bridgew.edu/observatory.

Tony Houser, observatory director at Wheaton College in Norton, said Wheaton’s public telescope hours, now on summer break, will return on Friday nights starting in September.

Mark Arsenault can be reached at mark0079@comcast.net.