CAMPUS
c Dearborn telescope is now at the Adler Planetarium.
Space Case Dearborn Observatory’s past is out of this world. By Christina Cala
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26 | SPRING 2011
photo: daniel schuleman
estled between Tech and Garrett Evangelical Seminary stands Dearborn Observatory. A 38-foot aluminum dome made of ridged metal sheets houses Dearborn’s main attraction, a refracting telescope that the public can look through during observing sessions on Friday evenings. Dearborn has served as the home of many scientific contributions in the field of astronomy. But what is not evident from a visit to Dearborn is the observatory’s slew of quirky directors and their achievements. The road to these discoveries hasn’t always been easy. As a telescope operator and observing session host at Dearborn, Communication junior Laura Kick knows a great deal about the challenges astronomers faced. One story Kick tells visitors at Friday night observing sessions is that of professor and Dearborn Director George Washington “Jupiter” Hough. When Dearborn caught fire in the early 1900s, Hough reentered the evacuated observatory twice in an effort to save 20 years worth
of research on the rotations of Jupiter and the sun. Friends watched in amazement as he entered twice and stopped him from going back in a third time. Amazingly, the telescope and Hough’s research were undamaged. Hough was director of Dearborn from 1879 until his death in 1909. In addition to being the first observatory director to receive a salary for his position, Hough designed many meteorological instruments and discovered more than 250 double stars in his 30 years at Dearborn. Dearborn has had its fair share of devoted researchers. Professor J. Allen Hynek is best known for his work on UFOs and his classification of alien encounters, which inspired Steven Spielberg’s 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hynek also served as technical director of the film and made a cameo appearance in it. Only a year after he came to Northwestern as the chairman of what was a small astronomy department, Hynek became Dearborn’s director in 1960. Hynek was also under contract with the Air Force at this point as a scientific adviser on Project Blue Book. First called Project Sign, then called Project Grudge, Project Blue Book was a UFO incidence investigation project Hynek worked on for 20 years. During this time he examined some 10,000 cases of UFO sightings. Hynek began work with the Air Force in
1948 when he was still teaching at Ohio State University. At first a skeptic, he was hired by the Air Force to determine if incidents reported as UFO encounters could be explained astronomically. But Hynek soon began to believe in the existence of aliens and UFOs after encountering numerous cases that he could not disprove through science. Hynek became an important name in the world of UFO research and went on to found the Center for UFO Studies in 1973, providing the public with reliable information on UFOs. He also wrote a book, The UFO Experience, published in 1972, in which he famously laid out the three kinds of close encounters. The first of these is when a UFO is sighted but leaves no evidence, the second leaves physical traces such as broken branches or fragments and the third is when contact is made. As his celebrity grew, administrators at Northwestern became embarrassed, and they stressed that Hynek keep his center separate. In 1978, Hynek retired from Northwestern. Some say it was because of Hynek and his UFO research that Northwestern’s astronomy department merged with the physics department in 1977, though this has not been verified. Though Hynek definitely had his fair share of eccentricities — such as his odd appearance, his choice to cover his office from ceiling to floor in pictures of UFOs and extensive research of alien encounters — his legacy doesn’t end there. Hynek also oversaw the growth of Northwestern’s astronomy department and made important contributions to the field of astronomy by being the first to successfully integrate television technology into telescopes, helping develop a proximity fuse for the Navy, working on the effort to put the first satellite in space and with a team creating a tracking station network for that planned satellite. This history and his legacy have not disappeared. His work is now housed in the University Archives, but when Hynek was director, he kept his work in a large black metal safe with gold detailing. This safe sits in the foyer of the observatory today. Now, it holds a set of spare telescope keys. Dearborn’s rich history does not end with the people who have cared for it. The 18.5-inch lens still in the observatory today was commissioned by the University of Mississippi in the hopes to house the largest telescope in the world. At that point, Harvard Observatory and Russia’s Poklovo Observatory housed the largest telescopes, both at 15 inches. With the start of the Civil War, transport of the lens from Massachusetts, where it was made, to Mississippi became nearly impossible. The Chicago Astronomical Society acquired the telescope lens and began building an observatory for it in 1863. This was the first incarnation of Dearborn. The second came in 1889, while Hough was director. In 1939, 26 men using 600 jacks lifted Dearborn and, over three months, moved it 664 feet south. It took a tractor and two teams of horses. Its next update came in 1985 when renovations were made and finally, in 1997, when the new dome was installed. The rest is history.