Pittsburgh prepared for star-gazing, weather isn’t

The stars may have been shining that night. But some of the hundreds of people who visited the… The stars may have been shining that night. But some of the hundreds of people who visited the Allegheny Observatory on a Friday night last month couldn’t tell, because of the overcast skies.

But then again, what should they have expected? As Bill Donohoe, a part-time amateur observer at the observatory, said, “It’s Pittsburgh.”

In Riverview, about eight miles from Pitt’s main campus, Pitt’s observatory held its annual open house.

In 1865, William Thaw, who was in charge of an older observatory, gave his observatory to Western University of Pennsylvania — which is now Pitt — for free, providing an endowment to keep it functioning after private interest began to dwindle. At the time, the observatory housed the second largest telescope in the United States.

Samuel Langley then took control of maintaining and revitalizing the observatory, viewing it as a way to make a name for himself in the region. To continue to subsidize the observatory, he began to sell something many people are now short on: time.

Using the observatory to study the stars and the Earth’s exact position in the universe, he and his workers calculated the exact time, to one half-second per month. Langley then sold the time measurements to railroad companies, so they could keep regular schedules.

With the money he raised, Langley directed the observatory’s research toward looking at sunspots. This particular research allowed him to collect data concerning the sun’s size.

After Langley left to work at the Smithsonian Institute, James Keeler, an astrophysicist, took control. He changed the direction of the observatory’s focus toward studying other planets, particularly Saturn, Mars and Jupiter. He put much attention into discovering what the rings of some planets were made up of, finding that they were not solid but, rather, composed of particles.

“He proved that Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian cannot race each other around the rings,” said Art Glaser, the observatory’s historian.

Glaser explained that as the smog of the city began to overwhelm the observatory, officials decided to build a new one — the current one. The city paid for the land and some of Pittsburgh’s multimillionaires, including Andrew Carnegie, provided the materials. By 1906, the building was finished, needing only a final paint job.

Today, astronomy students visit the observatory for lab classes, and introductory-level students must visit at least once a semester. While some research is still done at the observatory, Donohoe said that some academics now focus on subjects like quasars and dark matter, which the observatory cannot realistically handle, so they travel as far as Australia to have access to the necessary equipment.

But while the massive telescopes might not be used for all modern research projects, they certainly impressed many of the people in attendance. As two elementary school-aged boys walked into the first tour area housing a telescope, their eyes widened and smiles overtook their faces.

“Oh, wow!” they both said.

The telescope, which stood about as tall as four average-sized men, was miniature compared to the second one the tourists saw. But the visitors kept their winter coats on in the first room, as the temperature was kept low by the long opening in the ceiling that allowed the telescope to peer into the night sky, toward the moon.

After giving a presentation to one group of visitors, Diane Turnshek, an observer and instructor at several schools, including Pitt, fielded questions. She informed the group that the difference between a star and a planet is its size. Planets are about one-tenth the size of stars, and 100 earths could fit across the sun’s surface, she said, adding that the rays many young people draw around sun do not truly exist; rather, the sun is a perfect sphere.

The second telescope included in the tour was giant compared to the first. Standing in the room, the nearly 40 people in one group stared at the 10,000-pound telescope. According to Carl Stetar, another observer, the telescope stretched 47 feet long, and, to keep it steady, the telescope was anchored to the ground. Not the floor, but the ground; a hole in the center of the circular room allowed the telescope to go below the floor and many feet into the earth.

Stetar also explained that the telescope had a clock inside it, allowing it to maintain a steady fixture of certain points in the sky while the earth moved.

Donohoe said the knowledge gained from learning how far the Earth is to the stars adds to the mass of human knowledge. He added that astronomy also lets people know where they are in the universe, and that, one day, such information may become useful.