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Want to relate a fun story of students going above and beyond that relates to one of my favorite things to spend time on -- PSU astronomy history. First off, in many pictures of Old Main, the armillary sphere that was the class gift of 1966 is featured.

Years ago, one of my (now retired) colleagues posed the question, "What's wrong with this armillary sphere?". It took me a while to notice the error, but the one he and I talked about way back when was that the constellations of the Zodiac are shown on the equator, not the Ecliptic.

So I like to pose this as a challenge question in classes where I teach about the Ecliptic. I show them a picture, tell them they walk by this landmark every day, and then I tell them if they can spot an error on it, they get extra credit.

Well, I posed this question to my class of first year undergrads this spring semester, and two of them came back having found a second error! They pointed out that the constellations of the Zodiac are not aligned with the proper dates (e.g., this shows Pisces on the winter Solstice).