Abbey Kurtz, a second-year student majoring in psychology, co-founded the Astronomy Club last semester. The club, which just got off the ground at the beginning of this semester, brings together a variety of different aspects of astronomy for a fun-filled experience.

The New Paltz Oracle : When did you get involved with the Astronomy Club?Abbey Kurtz: Well, I'm actually the co-founder. We founded it, Jeanne Edwards and I, last semester. We took “Exploring the Solar Systems” with Amy Donnelly last semester, and she’s the coolest professor ever so we started hanging out with her in the planetarium and she started showing us how to run the planetarium and do planetarium shows, so we decided we were going to start the Astronomy Club… we went through all the SA stuff last semester and we got it going this semester.

NPO : What do you do?AK: We meet in the planetarium every Tuesday at 8 [p.m.]. The last few meetings we started off with myths and legends, like we’ll research topics about stars. A lot of the times if we’re talking about constellations we’ll run to the planetarium and show those particular constellations… we’ll pick out our own constellations and make up our own stories. In December there’s [a meteor shower] that’s [really big]. We’re trying to plan a campus-wide thing where we can get everyone to come out. Right now we’re just trying to get noticed.

NPO : Do you do anything astrology-related?AK: We do sometimes… a lot of people came to the club because they want to do astrology things. We don’t really want to have a conventional president, vice president, etc. We’re kind of just making up E-board positions so we have an astrologer… we have a wizard… we have myth busters, people who do that sort of thing… a lot of the myths include the constellations like Taurus, Cancer, Gemini, all that stuff, so they’ll bring in myths about that sign.

NPO : Anything else you want to add?

AK: If it doesn’t work for this year we’ll do it next year, but we’re going to try to have a Halloween program. We’re looking at these Web sites where you can get these funky moonrocks... just like gimmicky stuff to sell at fundraisers. Also, we really want to get more people to know about the planetarium... it’s in Coykendall right across from the auditorium. It’s pretty neat.

For a new club, Astronomy Club all ready has a fairly action-packed semester planned. With between 10 and 15 regular members each week, they can see their popularity growing.Check out their Facebook if you’re interested!