Observatories « Observatories and Instruments

Sphinx Observatory

17 07 2011

Sphinx Observatory, Jungraujoch. Photo credit: Eric Hill

I travel a lot for work.* That can be a bad thing, in that I often miss sleeping in my own bed, but it can also be a good thing, because it gives me a chance to visit observatories that don’t necessarily fit in with my academic research agenda. One place I’d really like to visit–but let’s face it, the odds aren’t good–is the Sphinx Observatory at the High Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch, Switzerland. With its 76 cm Cassegrain telescope and Coudé focus, the observatory operates as part of the solar spectrometer of the Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique de l’Université de Liège, Belgium, and the LIDAR system run by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.

I’ll admit that my interest in Sphinx is more about aesthetics and history than current science research. LIDAR (Light Detecting and Ranging) is interesting, although meteorology isn’t my field, and certainly solar spectroscopy would hold my attention. But what really attracts me about Sphinx is its location 3500 m above sea level in the Bernese Alps.

Sphinx Observatory

Photos of Sphinx tend to emphasize the remote location and the extreme weather surrounding the observatory. The site looks pristine and almost primordial, as if humans had scarcely touched the mountain during the process of dropping an astronomical castle on its summit.

Sphinx Observatory

For the most part, however, the photos are illusory. Don’t misunderstand me: working conditions at Sphinx are challenging. The regulations for the research station highlight some of the challenges, noting that, “because of the high altitude and the isolation, life and work at Jungfraujoch make great physical and psychological demands. Experience has shown that in general the researchers at Jungfraujoch do not have the same working capacity and are more irritable than at lower altitudes. If possible, researchers should not stay at Jungfraujoch for longer than approximately four weeks at a time.” So, that’s a serious emotional and physical commitment in pursuit of scientific research. The alpine weather can’t help much (check out the mountain web cam if you don’t believe me).

Still, as beautiful as they are, the photos misrepresent the observatory just a bit, in that they mask the site’s accessibility. The observatory is accessible year round via the Jungfrau Railway and, in fact, it was because the railroad made visiting the summit so (relatively) easy that the mountain was chosen as the site for meteorological research. Discussions for implementing a research program began as soon as the railroad was completed in 1912. The research station grew in fits and starts for years, and the observatory wasn’t completed until 1937. The first dome was added to the observatory in 1950. As it turned out, the need for astronomical observing was so great at the station that another two domes were added at the Gornergrat High Altitude Research Station (Matterhorn region) in the 1960s.

As the histories of both Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat research stations demonstrate, high altitude research is as connected to tourism as it is to science. While early explorations of the alpine region were driven by what we might call “scientific curiosity,” particularly the glacial and geological studies, the introduction of the railroad opened up the mountains to anyone who could afford to pay for passage. Hotel building at Gornergrat began in 1896, and when the railroad was completed in 1898, tourists flocked to the region. The Hotel Kulm Gornergrat was built between 1897 and 1907; today the hotel uses its immediate proximity to the research station as a draw for tourists. Visiting is still a matter of money: the roundtrip ticket from Zermatt to Gornergrat is 60 Euros; a double room at the Hotel Kulm will run you 167.65 Euros. You can eat fairly cheaply in the cafeteria of the Top of Europe Restaurant at Sphinx, but the Crystal dining room will set you back a bit more (I have no idea why they have a Bollywood room in the Alps). Some forms of leisure are just always reserved for the monied among us.

Sphinx Observatory

I can’t say that Switzerland has ever made my top twenty list of places I’d like to visit, but the photos of Sphinx Observatory are certainly making me reconsider my priorities. It’s going to require some serious re-working of my household budget, though.

Sphinx Observatory

*A lot. In the past six years, I’ve spent fourteen months in India, three months in the United Kingdom, and two weeks in France, all in the pursuit of research. Other work-related travel conducted in the same time period has taken me to: Minneapolis, Madison (x2), Chicago (x4), Boston, Los Angeles, Austin, Washington D.C., Savannah, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Philadelphia, South Bend, Princeton, and New York. I’m not even going to talk about trips to visit family in Washington, Oregon and California.

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Categories : Observatories, Tourism

University of Illinois

11 07 2011

[Entry 2 of 3 on the observatory at UIUC; read Entry 1 here.]

The University of Illinois Observatory held an impromptu open house last weekend, so we dragged a friend to campus so she could experience some sky-watching. She seemed genuinely thrilled by both the view of Saturn through the 12″ refractor and the view of the moon through a light bucket (1o” Dobsonian reflector) the UIAS had set up on the lawn to the west of the observatory. UIAS is a friendly group, and I highly recommend joining their listserv if you live in the area so you receive announcements about their open houses.

I’ve already written quite a bit about the building, but I was struck anew by the architecture while walking around the first floor. More specifically, I was struck by the pendentives, those transitional elements that let builders set a round dome on a square (or in this case, octagonal) building. In European building traditions, pendentives are usually covered with plaster so the surface is smooth. The pendentives in the observatory at UIUC are a little more utilitarian, however:

Pendentives, University of Illinois Observatory, July 2011. Photo credit: JR

The pendentives here are exposed brick, painted but not disguised with plaster. (As an aside, the photo above also shows an antique 6″ equatorial refractor.) Before going upstairs, I thought to myself, “This is a very honest building.” The repressed brick out of which the walls and telescope were built is readily apparent. The warm temperature inside also was fairly honest. During the cooler evening hours, the masonry off-puts the heat it stored during the day, which would be a good thing if you were trying to heat the place, but is actually a bad thing because the radiation causes turbulence just when you want to start using the telescope.

At any rate, from the inside, the observatory seems like an honest building. It’s not quite as honest from the outside, however. Well, the observatory’s octagonal shape remains quite obvious, even though the east side of the building has been covered up by later additions:

Northeast facade, University of Illinois Observatory, July 2011. Photo credit: JR

Most of the exterior materials are constructionally transparent. The walls are made of brick, the pilasters are made of brick, the door and window headers are made of limestone. The balcony railing is painted wood, the dome roof adequately expresses the shape of the interior of the dome. On the other hand, the brackets under the lip of the dome are completely decorative, having no real role in the support of the roof structure. Moreover, they’re not even wood, but sheet metal, crimped and folded into the curves.

Closer view of brackets, University of Illinois Observatory, July 2011. Photo credit: JR

Even closer view of brackets, University of Illinois Observatory, July 2011. Photo credit: JR

If you look closely at the brackets on the far left and right (click on the photo to enlarge), you can see they’re starting to pull apart. So, this is an interesting, but dishonest building, if you buy into the Modernist myth of materials necessarily expressing their function (which I only do on every other Friday). It’s quite different from it’s Big Ten counterpart, Kirkwood Observatory at Indiana University, despite the fact both observatories house 12″ refracting telescopes. One of the IUAS hosts offered to give me a tour of the building during daylight hours, so expect an entry discussing the instruments closer to the beginning of fall semester.

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Categories : Observatories, University of Illinois

Quasars, ESO VLT, UKIDSS, and more

4 07 2011

Paranal Platform, home of the ESO's VLT. Photo credit: ESO/H. H. Heyer

The FORS2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Gemini North. UKIDSS. Astronomers in Germany. Astronomers in the United Kingdom. Astronomers in Hawaii. A quasar with a mass two million times that of our Sun. That’s the short version of the story. The slightly longer version runs something like this:

The European Southern Observatory is home to the VLT and its array of (mostly) optical instruments. Among those instruments is FORS2 (FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph), a visible-spectrum imager and low-resolution spectrograph.* For the past five years, German astronomers working through the ESO have been searching for a quasar with a redshift higher than 6.5. The higher the redshift, the more distant the object; the more distant the object, the closer the object to the originary moment of the universe. Until recently, the most distant quasars we’ve observed have had redshifts of approximately 6.4.** This means we’re seeing these objects as they were about 870 million years after the Big Bang. We know there are more distant objects out there, but they can’t be viewed with instruments tuned to the visible spectrum. They’re simply too far away; by the time the radiation from these objects reaches us, it’s been so stretched by the expansion of the universe, it can only be detected in the infrared.

Enter the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS). As its name implies, UKIDSS is a consortium of astronomers working together to conduct infrared surveys of the sky using the Wide Field Infrared Camera (WFCAM) on the UKIRT on Mauna Kea. Imagine the celebration when the team discovered a quasar with a redshift of 7 (actually, 7.085±0.003). Now known as ULAS J1120+0641, this new quasar shows us the universe only 770 million years after the Big Bang—100 million years earlier than previously measured quasars. If those numbers aren’t big enough to give you pause, here’s another one to consider: it took 12.9 billion years for the light from ULAS J1120+0641 to reach us. That definitely qualifies as far, far away.

But the story’s not quite over yet. Before announcing the quasar’s discovery in the journal Nature last week, the research team conducted some follow-up observations at the VLT and Gemini North to confirm the object’s distance from us. I could type for ten more minutes, but that still wouldn’t give me enough time to list all the groups and countries contributing to the VLT and Gemini Telescopes (and my typing speed is quick). I know I’m supposed to be in a state of sadness over the end of the U.S. space shuttle program, and I am, but I’m also heartened daily by the incredible successes of these multi-national, multi-agency, multi-interest projects.

The ESO has made the letter describing the discovery available in .pdf form in its public archives.

* The design of FORS2 and its now-retired twin, FORS1, happened by joint effort of ESO, Landessternwarte Heidelberg, University Observatory Göttingen and University Observatory Munich.

**The quasar CFHQS J0210045613 has a redshift of 6.44; SDSS 1148+52513, a redshift of 6.42; and CFHQS J2329+030114, a redshift of 6:42.

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Categories : Gemini, Instruments, News, Observatories, Telescopes

University of Washington

1 07 2011

Just a quick addendum to my earlier post on Theodor Jacobsen Observatory at University of Washington. While digging through UW’s digital archives, I came across a photo of what must have been Professor Taylor’s original observatory: a modest structure, constructed of wood, standing at the north side of the main building of the Territorial University. If I’m reading my archival records properly, this was built after, or just around the time of, the university’s move to its new (present-day) location in 1895. That would mean the building in the background of the photo was no longer in use.*

Territorial University and Observatory, Seattle, Washington, n.d. Photo courtesy of MSCUA, University of Washington Libraries

*Interesting, non-observatory related factoid: the university regents tried, but failed, to sell this piece of land after the school relocated, and 115+ years later, UW still owns it. It is now known as the “Metropolitan Tract,” and is worth much money.

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Categories : Observatories, University of Washington

Wallpaper Wednesday

29 06 2011

Laser and Star Trails over Gemini North. Photo credit: Gemini Observatory/Joy Pollard

Today’s wallpaper features Gemini North, the Mauna Kea branch of the Gemini Observatory. Like Gemini South on the summit of Cerro Pachon in Chile, the observatory at Gemini North houses an 8.1-meter diameter optical/infrared telescope. Together, North and South are capable of surveying the entire night sky with an array of instruments.

In addition to star trails, the image above shows the trace the Laser Guide Star (the LGS creates an “artificial star” which is used as a reference source for the adaptive optics systems of the telescope’s various instruments) created on May 21, 2010. If you’re looking at the high-res wallpaper, you can see a similar LGS trace from the W. M. Keck Observatory in the lower left hand corner of the photo. The bright, wide streak at the far left of the image is the moon’s trail. Several other Mauna Kea observatories and telescopes are also visible in the high-res image. From left to right, they are: the Subaru Telescope (looks like a tube set on end), Keck (the twin domes), NASA IRTF (behind which can be seen the peak of Haleakalā on Maui, rising from the clouds), and CFHT (just behind Gemini North).

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Categories : Gemini, Observatories, Wallpaper

Theodor Jacobsen Observatory

25 06 2011

The June edition of the alumni magazine from (one of) my undergrad institutions arrived in the mail on Thursday. The last inside page (scroll to the bottom of the linked .pdf) was dedicated to a photo of the 6″ refracting telescope in the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory on the campus of the University of Washington. We’ve been having a discussion about the digital manipulation of the sky viewed through the dome’s opening—while the bottom half of the sky does a good job of representing Seattle’s light pollution, the top half isn’t a particularly accurate rendering of the sky visible above the observatory. Even so, it’s a lovely view of the Warner & Swasey equatorial mount and the Brashear lens, as well as the Warner & Swasey wood dome.*

$Refracting Telescope, Warner & Swasey Equatorial Mount$

Refracting Telescope, Warner & Swasey Equatorial Mount. Image credit: University of Washington

Today, the observatory stands next to the campus gates at 45th and Memorial Way. While this part of campus remained undeveloped until the 1950s, by the time I was a student at UW in the 1980s, the woods had mostly been lost to (well-lit) parking lots. Possibly a few of the astronomy classes used the telescope for educational purposes until then, but mostly the observatory functioned for fifty years as a nice historical monument, the second oldest building on campus. Fortunately, the telescope was refurbished in the 1990s and just ten years ago, the astronomy department began using the observatory in its public outreach program.

The early astronomy program at University Washington had strong ties with the work being done at Lick Observatory, east of St. Jose, CA. Mathematics professor Joseph M. Taylor studied at Lick as a “special student” in 1890 and returned to UW to found the astronomy department in 1891. When the university moved from downtown Seattle to its present location, Taylor spent $3000 allocated to the department by the Regents on a 6″ refractor and a building in which to house it. The original wood frame observatory stood for only three years before Taylor started looking for a more permanent structure. In 1895, he appropriated the stone and money left over from the construction of nearby Denny Hall and directed it toward the construction of the masonry observatory we see on campus today.

The observatory is named after a later professor of astronomy, Theodor S. Jacobsen, who began teaching at UW in 1928. A graduate of UC-Berkeley, he worked as a Lick Observatory Fellow for two years after completing his Ph.D. Allegedly, he hurt his back moving the Great Refractor one night and decided to pursue a less physically risky career, like teaching astronomy and mathematics (although he continued his research on variable stars, so I’m not so sure about that story). At any rate, Professor Jacobsen had a long career at the university and afterward: his last book came out in 1999, four years before his death at the age of 102.

Theodor Jacobsen Observatory. Photo credit: University of Washington

The architecture of the observatory is well documented in the Historic Property Inventory Form submitted as part of the application process for inclusion on the State Register of Historic Buildings. Two choice passages:

“Built in 1894-95, this small, stone masonry building is the second oldest on the University of Washington campus. Charles W. Saunders, a leader of the architectural profession in Seattle during this era, designed this building as well as the first building on campus, Denny Hall, and the first gymnasium. Situated at the northern end of the central campus southeast of the NE 45th Street entrance, the observatory was built with stone remaining from the construction of Denny Hall, using surplus funds from that earlier project. The telescope dome sits on top of a two-story tower at the north end of a one0story building with flat roofline and a rectangular plan. Supported by large wooden brackets, a shallow wooden balcony with a low wooden balustrade encircles the northern half of this tower at the second story, ending at a small, enclosed stairwell on the west elevation. Built with roughly cut stone set in broken courses, the structure features segmentally arched door and window openings with radiating voussoirs reminiscent of the Romanesque Revival style. The windows appear to retain their original wooden sash units. Sheathed in sheet metal, the telescope dome rotates on cannon balls left over from the Civil War** and still houses the original six-inch clear-aperture telescope. Well-maintained with good physical integrity, the observatory continues to hold free public showings on selected clear nights with slide shows given on other evenings.”

“Charles W. Saunders initiated his practice in Seattle shortly after the 1869 fire and remained among the leaders of the architectural profession for the next twenty years. After 1898, Saunders was in a sixteen-year partnership with George W. Lawton. Together, they designed an extraordinarily wide range of projects executed in an eclectic variety of styles, including schools, residences, apartments, and commercial buildings as well as several buildings for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Lawton had also come to Seattle in 1889 and had worked for Saunders before entering into partnership with him.”

*If you’re counting, this makes the fifth Warner & Swasey telescope I’ve discussed recently; see the entries for the Lick, Kirkwood, Yerkes and University of Illinois observatories for the other four.

**Similar to the rotating mechanism in use at the Cincinnati Observatory Centre

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Categories : Observatories, University of Washington, Warner and Swasey

Meteor Crater Observatory

20 06 2011

Meteor Crater Observatory, c. 1943. Image courtesy Illinois Digital Archives

The building shown above wasn’t designed for viewing the night skies, but as its caption suggests, it was built for the purposes of contemplating a (long past) astronomical event. This is a photo of an observatory built by Harry Locke in the late 1930s for the purpose of viewing the Barringer Meteorite Crater near Winslow, Arizona. Harry and his wife, Hope, owned the land where Route 66 met the road leading to the Barringer crater. At that time, the crater was still privately owned by Barringer’s Standard Mine Company, and tourists weren’t welcome on the active mining site. The Lockes opened “Meteor Station,” a cafe and gas station, at “Meteor Junction,” hoping the business would bring in enough money to fund their life’s dream, the building of a meteor museum.* They seemed to have immediately leased Meteor Station to “Rimmy Jim” Giddings (maybe they thought his colorful personality would draw in more tourists and so make more money?). Giddings ran the business until his death in 1943, after which time Ruth and Sid Griffin took over the operation.**

Apparently crater observatories weren’t a very lucrative business in the first half of the twentieth century. The Meteor Crater Observatory opened in the late 1930s but went into foreclosure after it lost money. Sadly, Locke was killed while trying to earn a living with the Winslow Police Department. After Locke’s death, Dr. Harvey Nininger took over the property and opened the the American Meteorite Museum in 1946. Nininger managed to attract some 30,000 visitors to the museum in the first year, but the business suffered with the re-alignment of Route 66 in 1949. Nininger hung on until 1953, when the museum closed for good. The building was abandoned and today, exists only as a ruin.

Meteor Crater Observatory, 1992. Image courtesy Northern Arizona University Cline Library Special Collections and Archives

Old Observatory near Meteor Crater, 2003. Photo Credit: D. C. McGhee

*Harry Locke was also an amateur cartoonist. His SW sense of humor was documented by Owen Arnold in the March 1943 issue of Desert Magazine (pp. 17-21).

**Joe Sonderman, Route 66 in Arizona, Charleston: Acadia Publishing, 49.

***Sonderman, 50.

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Categories : Observatories, Tourism

Kirkwood Observatory

17 06 2011

As a follow up to my post on Kirkwood Observatory, here are a few historic photos from the Archives Photograph Collection at Indiana University.

First, we have a slightly damaged photo taken within the first decade of the building’s life. If you compare this image with the night shot I posted earlier, you can this photo was taken before the addition to the west side of the observatory. I have a feeling that collegiate ivy tucked into the northwest corner of the building is going to cause trouble.

Kirkwood Observatory, c. 1910. Photo credit: Indiana University Archives

Second, we have a view of the building in an apparently defunct stage, covered with…wait for it… ivy.

Kirkwood Observatory, June 6, 1950. Photo credit: Indiana University Archives

As you can see from the third photo, a view of the observatory through the trees of Dunn’s Woods, a fresh crop of ivy was engulfing the observatory in 1975. I was just admiring the repointing job someone did on the mortar in those limestone walls last weekend; now I know why the joints had to be repaired.

Kirkwood Observatory, c. 1975. Photo credit: Indiana University Archives

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Categories : Observatories

Kirkwood Observatory

11 06 2011

Kirkwood Observatory, Bloomington, Indiana. Photo credit: JR

Well, it’s summer in the American Midwest and that means severe weather is either coming or going, day and night. Even when the thunderstorms are quiet, the skies tend toward overcast here, a fact that must frustrate the students running the public program at the Kirkwood Observatory at Indiana University. In theory, the observatory holds an open house every Wednesday evening. In practice, the weather frequently interferes with the schedule.

Kirkwood Observatory, which stands on the western edge of Dunn Woods on IU’s campus, was named after Daniel Kirkwood, a professor of Mathematics at the university from 1856 until 1886. You might recognize his last name: Professor Kirkwood discovered (and more importantly, explained) what we now call the “Kirkwood gaps” in the asteroid belt.* He also proposed what is now known as (since disproved) Kirkwood’s Law.

Professor Kirkwood retired in 1886 and passed away in 1895. Five years later, construction began on the observatory that would bear his name. William J. Hussey, an astronomer at the Lick Observatory, came to town to give the dedication talk, “Astronomy in Modern Life,” for the opening day of the new building on May 15, 1901. The observatory was outfitted wtih a 12″ (0.3m) refracting telescope, built by Warner & Swasey Company. Sadly, the observatory was almost instantly obsolete, not only because of its instrumentation, but because of light pollution from the growing town. By 1920, university astronomers were seeking a new venue for making observations. Financial difficulties slowed the search down, and it wasn’t until 1936 that Professor Cogshall convinced IU to fund a new observatory at Knightridge.

Kirkwood Observatory has suffered a bit from neglect over the years, as the profession moved on to more sophisticated instrumentation (IU students working on observational astronomy now observe remotely, using the 3.5-m WIYN observatory at Kitt Peak in Arizona). The wood dome was in such sketchy condition by the 1990s that IU’s observational techniques class was held on the roof of Swain Hall West. Fortunately, the building and telescope received an overhaul in 2001. The telescope is now used for teaching and public programs. Judging from the crowds we’ve encountered at the observatory recently, interest in observational astronomy is alive and well in Bloomington, Indiana.

Don’t forget to the check with the IU Astronomy Department before heading over the other observatory. They’ve been pretty good about keeping their twitter feed updated (@iuastro) on scheduled observing days.

*The main asteroid belt in our solar system lies between Mars and Jupiter. When studying the distribution of the asteroids in this region, Kirkwood noticed that there were several gaps, or empty zones, in the belt. He proposed that these gaps were caused by the orbital resonance (gravitational disturbance) of Jupiter.

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Categories : Kirkwood Observatory, Observatories, Warner and Swasey

Lick Observatory

9 06 2011

One final set of photos of Lick Observatory: two shots of weather (note the scraping of the image of the sunset); one facade (nice car); one landscape (compare it with the postcard I posted a few days ago); and one gorgeous black-and-white of the moon. As always, click on the image for high res.

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Categories : Lick Observatory, Observatories