Things are looking up for an astronomy program at Northern Lehigh Middle School.

District Superintendent Matthew J. Link shared at Monday’s school board meeting that the district was the recipient of a $5,000 grant from the Northern Lehigh Education Foundation.

“Our Northern Lehigh Education Foundation has again stepped up and done something quite remarkable for our school district,” Link said. “This is because they received the ITC funding again this year which they always dedicate for Northern Lehigh School District.”

Link said that at the end of last school year, middle school Principal David Hauser wrote a request to them to help get a program off the ground over at the middle school.

He said that Hauser requested $3,000, and the Education Foundation actually awarded the district $5,000.

“We have already purchased a state-of-the art telescope; it is professional quality, considered the industry standard for anyone not working in a university but kind of doing amateur stargazing and sky-watching,” Hauser said. “It’s an excellent piece of equipment.”

Hauser said that what they did not have was the astrophotography and imaging hardware and software that goes along with that.

“The telescope will allow you to view these objects,” Hauser said. “The other equipment brings them into clarity and allows you to see them and save pictures of them that are textbook quality that if you would go to any bookstore and buy a coffee-table book of outer space and the solar system and the cosmos, we will be able to generate pictures that are akin to that from our middle school.”

Hauser said they will be training their teachers and students, “and we have teachers very excited to dive right in”

“I expressed just a lot of gratitude to the Education Foundation for (their) generosity of helping us get that program underway and really taking things to the next level,” he said. “The sky is the limit when it comes to this endeavor, and we are very excited to get going.”

Director Gale Husack asked when the program would be held.

“The game-changer in the amount, the $3,000 grant that I initially wrote, was for the equipment that would talk to the telescope purchase, and that would work in tandem,” Hauser said. “The extra money, we’re going to have some discussion in the coming weeks about what the extra funds are going to be going to.”

Hauser said there are things that can be done during the daytime in school that are “more meteorological.”

“We’re also looking to have evening programs as well for the community at large,” he said. “So we’re going to try to do a nice soft roll out, get us used to the equipment, get everybody trained in it and then eventually open it up K-12, community at large.”

Hauser said they’ll be looking to get some mounts out in the middle school court yard.

“We have the perfect facility for it,” he said.