CMC SATELLITE CAMPUS

by Jef Marmatz, Z107.7 News Director
September 2, 2023

Sky’s The Limit Observatory and Nature Center President Ann Congdon, with Mike Schmitt, Board Treasurer and campus technology manager, join Copper Mountain College Professor of Physics and Astronomy John Watkins, and Ramón Abrego III, Dean of Instruction, Distance Education, and Learning Resources, in celebrating the new partnership between Sky’s The Limit and Copper Mountain College.

A new collaboration between two Morongo Basin institutions will instill young adults with an appreciation of the cosmos as seen from our dusty desert ground.

Sky’s the Limit Observatory will now act as a satellite campus for Copper Mountain College’s astronomy program, allowing high desert students and their professors incredible access to Joshua Tree National Park’s night skies.

Students from the college’s astronomy program will have the opportunity to see the stars for themselves through the observatory’s variety of telescopes, which includes a solar telescope, along with a full-scale model of the solar system, known as an orrery.

The observatory is steps from the north entrance to the National Park in Twentynine Palms, and is only a short drive from Copper Mountain College’s Joshua Tree campus.

The arrangement between Sky’s the Limit Observatory and CMC has been in the works since April, though the observatory has hosted students from the college and other high desert schools since it opened in 2004. Both organizations hope that this agreement will better promote understanding of and stewardship for dark night skies in the desert.

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