Almanac

Ask Bucky
Do you have questions? Ask Bucky has answers! Ask Bucky is a service provided by the Campus Information and Visitor Center — your one-stop shop for information about the UW–Madison campus and surrounding community, and your centralized source for off-campus housing listings. E-mail Bucky at askbucky@redgym. wisc.edu. Below are two questions Ask Bucky recently answered.

I have worked at UW–Madison for four years and have never been to the Washburn Observatory. I heard that it is open to the public on certain days. Can you give me some more information about the observatory and how one could visit?
Washburn Observatory is named after former Wisconsin Gov. Cadwallader C. Washburn, who allocated money toward the creation of an observatory at UW–Madison in 1876. The facility, which was designed to be larger than the one at Harvard, was built in 1881 and served as a major research facility for 50 years.

The observatory is located at 1401 Observatory Drive, and visiting is free and open to the public on the first and third Wednesday of every month. It is equipped with a 15-inch refractor telescope, which is powerful enough to view craters on the moon, the rings of Saturn, four of Jupiter’s moons and more. Over the course of an evening visit to the observatory, the telescope typically will be pointed at two or three objects. An astronomer also is present and available to answer questions. For more information, visit http://www.astro.wisc.edu/Washburn/ or call 262-9274 for recorded information. Happy stargazing!

Do you still have the corpse flower at your greenhouse? If so, when is it expected to bloom next?
The Titum Arum, also known as the corpse flower, last bloomed in August. These plants typically bloom only two or three times during their 40-year life span. With that said, researchers cannot predict when it will bloom again. For more information visit http://www.news.wisc.edu/titanarum2004/about.html, or contact the botany department at 262-1057.

UW-Madison again the No. 1 producer of Peace Corps volunteers
For more than a decade, UW–Madison has been the overall top producer of Peace Corps volunteers for large colleges. This year is no different, as UW–Madison keeps its No. 1 title with 123 volunteers serving in the field. Since Peace Corps’ inception, 2,654 alumni of UW–Madison have joined its ranks, making the university the No. 2 producer of volunteers of all time.

To view the entire 2005 “Top Producing Colleges and Universities” list, visit the Peace Corps Web site at http://www.peacecorps.gov/news/resources/stats/pdf/schools2005.pdf.

Cuban film festival features variety of styles
Madison’s third Cuban Film Festival, sponsored by the UW–Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies and Edgewood College, will be held Thursday, Feb. 24-Friday, March 4. A special guest, director Orlando Rojas, will present his latest film.

The festival, to be held on the UW–Madison and Edgewood campuses, will offer eight films, with English subtitles, produced on and off the island in 2003 and 2004. The films represent a variety of styles directed by established filmmakers and newcomers.

A distinguished group of Cuban and film experts will lead discussions.

The fee is $40. To register, call 262-2451. Admission to one session is free; however, registered participants will receive a CD with all the materials from the festival as well admission to specials events. For the festival schedule, visit https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/anoguera/c.htm.

Backward Glance
From Wisconsin Week of March 1, 1995: A space shuttle-borne telescope, called the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment, was scheduled to go into space aboard the space shuttle Endeavour for a planned 16-day mission … Gov. Tommy Thompson’s 1995-97 biennial state budget proposal was indicating major changes to the way UW–Madison functioned, including computer services control and building and remodeling project funding.