Community members visit CUAS’ new observatory at its grand opening, April 21, 2018.
Emma Gray
Editor
On April 21, the Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society held a ribbon-cutting for their new observatory, located next to their older Prairie Winds Observatory south of Champaign-Urbana.
Before the ribbon-cutting, the president of CUAS, David Leake, said a few words and after the ceremony members explored the new building, as well as the old observatory, and ate astronomy-themed cake.
The new observatory is 24 feet wide by 30 feet long with a sliding roof and drop down walls on the south side. The drop down walls allow the society to point their telescopes at regions of the sky closer to the horizon that the wall might otherwise block. The south wall was chosen to have the drop down walls because, in the summer, many interesting objects are in that direction, according to Leake. The south side also faces away from Champaign-Urbana’s city lights.
The project was under budget, according to Leake, at around $36,000, most of which came from donations by members of the organization. This estimate does not include the hours of work that volunteers put in.
CUAS originally had the idea to build a new observatory in the fall of 2014 Leake said. It had recently become a 501(c)(3) organization, meaning it was able to start taking tax-deductible donations to raise money for endeavors such as the new observatory. The organization had to decide exactly what they wanted to build and where they wanted to build it before construction could begin, however.
“What we did was what any company would do, we got a committee together,” Leake said. “…What we thought was, we’ll get a group of people who are interested in it and let them talk and argue it out, and we had some knock out, drag out discussions, which was good. It’s good to have that.”
The committee discussed various options like moving the new observatory farther from the city and the light pollution associated with the city. One proposed location was the Middle Fork River Forest Preserve, which is one of the darkest spots in the county, according to Leake.
The committee came to the decision to build on the old site because it is closer to Champaign-Urbana and is already known and used by many members of the community.
“The farther away you go, yes it’s dark, but then fewer people will use it,” Leake said.
The committee also discussed what size the new building should be and came to the decision to build the largest size discussed to allow for the most future expansion.
One future expansion that CUAS is planning is to turn the small storage room on the north side into a control room.
“Sometime in the future, ideally, you’ll be able to stay in a room that you can keep relatively warm in the winter times and run the telescopes remotely so you don’t have to stand out in the cold,” Leake said.
Another plan is to mount the telescopes into concrete footings in the floors.
“Right now we have telescopes and they’re on tripods—tripods are tripping hazards,” Leake said.
Besides being tripping hazards, the tripods are also not separated from any vibrations on the floor. The concrete footings in the floor are, however.
“We poured [the concrete blocks] first and then put something around them and then poured the rest of the floors. So actually those footings, and they go all the way down to the frost line, are separated from the floor. And what that means is, you could be taking a picture and jump up and down on the floor and there shouldn’t be any vibrations because they’re separate.”
The society is also working on smaller projects like putting up shelves and fixing minor problems that have come up.
The older dome observatory is also currently being updated by Jim Wehmer, a retired engineer from the University of Illinois. He has made control boxes to control motors that allow the old telescope to track objects in the sky. Wehmer has also built a new mount for the telescope.
Parkland and the C-U Astronomical Society work closely with one another to share their resources, Leake says. CUAS meets at 7 p.m. at the Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland on the second Thursday of every month. In return, CUAS volunteers to help Parkland’s planetarium during large events like the solar eclipse. Parkland classes are also invited to bring their telescopes out to the organization’s site to look up at the starts with less light pollution.
CUAS often does open houses on the Saturday closest to the first quarter moon phase, according to Leake. He says this time was chosen for the open house because, during a quarter moon, the moon’s craters and mountains take on a more three-dimensional appearance as they are lit from the side by the sun.
For more information on the Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society, visit cuas.org.
