University Times

As yet another first-time visitor walks wide-eyed into the Allegheny Observatory’s grandiose main corridor, Nancy Robinson responds with bemusement. “You’d think everyone would have been here by now,” said Robinson, who’s been business and operations manager at the observatory for more than 25 years.

Since 1914, free tours of the building have drawn many a school field trip and given thousands of nighttime visitors the opportunity to learn about the stars and to peer through a telescope.

Still, Robinson is amazed that the place seems to be among the city’s — and the University’s — best-kept secrets. Many Pittsburghers have never visited the three-domed neo-classical structure, and perhaps even fewer realize that the observatory perched atop a hill in Pittsburgh’s Riverview Park is a working, University-owned research laboratory.

Because the observatory is home to Pitt’s astronomic research, it’s open to the public only on a limited basis. Tours, with a nightly maximum of 45 visitors, are offered at 8 p.m. each Thursday and Friday from April through October. Although admission is free, reservations are necessary and available by calling 412/321-2400.

The main attractions are the building’s telescopes. The observatory houses three, the largest of which is the 47-foot long, 4-ton Thaw Memorial Refractor. Observers use it each night when skies are clear to make measurements that increase astronomers’ knowledge of star parallax and to search for planets beyond our solar system. Built in 1912, this telescope was designed for photographic use and has been used to collect a series of 110,000 exposures on glass plates, which are stored and studied in the observatory.

“Because of all the work we’ve done, we know where we are” in the universe, said Robinson. “The parallax work literally is involved with trying to get our bearings.”

Because the telescope is used for research, it’s off limits to tourists unless clouds preclude the night’s observations and guests are allowed a peek at the instrument. Visitors may look through it only once a year during the observatory’s open house. On that occasion (this year’s event is set for Sept. 29) the telescope’s camera equipment is removed and replaced with an eyepiece to allow for walk-up viewing.

Weather permitting, on tour nights visitors can look to the skies using the Fitz-Clark refractor telescope, built in 1861. The Fitz telescope was the original observatory’s main instrument, and now is equipped with a new name — a result of its adventurous past. It was the victim of an 1872 lens-napping, in which then-director Samuel Langley had to negotiate with the burglar in secret for its safe return. The glass came back scratched and had to be sent out for repair. The work improved the glass and the name of the man who re-figured the lens was added to it.

The third telescope, the 1906 Keeler reflector — named for one of the observatory’s early directors — has been used to study the sun and other stars, with a focus on gathering data on the spectrum of starlight from more than 10,000 stars.

For those who’d like to do more than tour the building, the Pitt Department of Physics and Astronomy sponsors a lecture series on a variety of topics at 7 p.m. on the third Friday of each month. Admission is free, but reservations are required, and the 45 available lecture hall seats fill quickly, Robinson said. A complete schedule is available by checking the events listed on line at www.phyast.pitt.edu. Building tours are given following each lecture.

The observatory also is a repository for a variety of instruments and artifacts. In the lecture hall is a transit telescope once used as part of a service that, for a fee, provided accurate time service to subscribers in business and industry. With calculations drawn from the motions of the stars, an observer could derive accurate time — information for which railroads and other industries paid.

Another treasure is the lens from the observatory’s original telescope, made by John Brashear. A millwright with a passion for astronomy, Brashear built his own telescope and later became renowned for his well-crafted precision optics. His skill prompted observatory director Samuel Langley to commission Brashear to build a telescope for the structure. “For opticians to look at this, this is a masterpiece,” said Robinson. It is displayed near a life-size Frank Vittor sculpture of Brashear, the man whose passion for the stars and ability to inspire others brought together the funding to construct the observatory between 1900 and 1912.

Brashear became observatory director (and, for a time, interim chancellor of the University) and when he died in 1920, his body was cremated and the ashes interred in a crypt beneath the Keeler telescope.

Robinson, who said she had no prior interest in astronomy when she took the observatory job in 1980, finds the solitude of her work amenable to her contemplative side. Being a daytime employee in a night-oriented facility, she often works alone under the watchful gaze of Brashear, whose portrait hangs in her office.

“I feel his spirit,” she said, admitting that Brashear’s love for the stars continues to have an inspirational impact today.

“I feel like I’m working for him, to keep his observatory going,” she said.

—Kimberly K. Barlow