No longer a star
Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay faces an uncertain future
When the Yerkes Observatory was built in the late 1890s, its 40-inch refracting telescope was the biggest and best in the world. It was with this telescope that astronomer William W. Morgan learned in 1951 the Milky Way galaxy forms a spiral. And many other notable astronomers conducted work at Yerkes, from Edwin Hubble (for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named) to Carl Sagan (who famously told Americans “we are made of star stuff ” on his 1980 PBS show “Cosmos”).
Now, the fate of the observatory and the 77acre campus around it is uncertain.
The University of Chicago, which has run the landmark institution since its construction began in 1895, announced in March that its operations would cease Oct.1. It accepted proposals for “expressions of interest” in the property through June.
One of those proposals came from the lakes area community of Williams Bay, where Yerkes is a staple. Local leaders want to keep it as an educational center with tours and programs. A decision is expected sometime this summer.
“As long as I’ve been in this area, it’s been this
iconic observatory,” says area resident Dianna Colman. “And the people around here, we love it, we really think it’s ours. So many of our friends and neighbors have either volunteered there, or worked there, or we know the scientists and they’ve taught our kids. It’s really part and parcel of the community.”
But its role in the world of science has evolved over the decades.
Nearly as soon as the telescope in Williams Bay was completed, more modern and powerful telescopes popped up, one by one, across the globe.
In 1908, a 60-inch reflector — a telescope that uses a large mirror instead of a lens — was built at Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California. In 1917, a 100-inch telescope was added at Mount Wilson. In 1948, a 200-inch reflector was built at the Palomar Observatory in California. The list goes on.
Although the University of Chicago’s astronomy department remained at Yerkes for several decades, the telescope itself became increasingly obsolete for those conducting cutting-edge research.
By the 1960s, the department started to have a smaller presence at Yerkes. By the 1990s, most astronomy research had moved elsewhere.
While some astronomers shifted their attention to other telescopes, those who remained teamed up with teachers and the local community to start the educational programs that would grow Yerkes into a powerhouse for science outreach.
Yerkes has enriched the lives of countless K-12 students and undergraduates from the University of Chicago and beyond. They’ve run summer camps, internships for high schoolers, workshops for teachers, many public events and tours, and more.
These aren’t your typical stargazing field trips. Yerkes has kept their programs at the forefront of education research. What they might lack in cuttingedge astronomy, they make up with cutting-edge astronomy outreach.
Kate Meredith is the director of education outreach at Yerkes. She explained that one of the current initiatives is through a National Science Foundation grant called Innovators Developing Accessible Tools for Astronomy (IDATA). They’re working with students with sensory impairments to explore non-visual ways to work with astronomy data. Many of the students are from the nearby Wisconsin Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Janesville.
Holding a 2-foot model of a telescope cut open on one side, she said: “This is not actually a part of the grant, but the students needed to be able to touch a telescope. So Kevin (McCarron, teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School) invented a telescope you can touch. Because typically you don’t want people’s fingers on your lenses and mirrors, but if you want to experience what a telescope really is — and its light path — then you need to be able to touch it. So he’s been building these for us so that we have a tool to teach with.”
Though the fate of the observatory itself will be determined by the university 90 miles away, the educational programs at Yerkes are self-sustaining. If necessary, they could be moved elsewhere.
Meredith understands that the innovations they’re doing in science outreach don’t line up with the research interests of the university. “In order to do more of this,” she said, gesturing to the demonstration telescope, “we need to have more freedom and autonomy. And in order for the university to pursue its research missions, it needs to put its resources in other areas.”
These “other areas” reflect astronomy’s history of each new telescope constantly one-upping the last. The University of Chicago is currently investing in a global astronomy initiative to build, once again, the best and biggest telescope.
The Giant Magellan Telescope, scheduled for construction at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, will have 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope — over 24 times the resolution of the Yerkes telescope.
While the staff and volunteers at Yerkes have prepared for a possible move in September, the community in and around Williams Bay has sprung to action to “save Yerkes.”
What started as a few meetings of concerned community members has morphed into the “Yerkes Future Foundation,” or YFF for short, now being led by Colman.
Critics of the university’s handling of the transition say that although the split makes sense for all involved, not enough notice was given between the announcement of ceasing of university operations (March 1), the call for proposals for the future of the property (April 22) and the deadline for proposals (June 15).
But Colman says, it was no sweat.
The transition’s been a long time coming, she explained. The University of Chicago attempted to cut ties and sell part of the property to a developer in 2006, but the Village Board voted to change the zoning around the property to block it. “The whole village went bats and just said no. No, this isn’t a good idea.
“I know it’s fast, but everyone here knew the other shoe was going to drop. Everybody else is wigged out about it, but I am not. They put the call for proposals out on April 22, and on May 2 we sent them a document,” Colman said. “If they had given us two years it wouldn’t have changed what we did.”
The community group is hoping that this time around they will be able to work with the university directly to achieve a vision for Yerkes that can benefit everyone.
“This is not like buying an ice cream parlor,” Colman said. “This is a scientific, historic, iconic — use any word you want to use — building. But it’s also a beautiful location, a gorgeous campus, and it has the potential for being a site for many different activities.”
When asked who YFF would want to run Yerkes, Colman explained her hopes to keep the current staff. “There’s a natural transition, trying to keep them on. They carry the history of this place. They have an amazing collective wisdom. We know we’ll need to have people in place that can carry this forward.”
YFF, she says, would sit as kind of a board, ushering things forward until they could run on their own.
Staff at Yerkes are hopeful that the new ownership chosen by the University of Chicago— whether YFF or some other group — will invite them to stay and continue their programs. “We’re willing to stay agile as things progress,” Meredith said. “We want to put ourselves in a position where we can get picked up and put back in the building, or not. We have to be prepared for the “or not.’ ”
The observatory building isn’t everything, but it adds a lot. “The observatory itself is kind of like magic. It’s that little extra bit of stuff that brings people together,” said Yerkes director and University of Chicago professor Al Harper. “The best case is that the doors will never close.”
YFF hopes its proposal will be chosen by the University of Chicago to lead Yerkes into their “next 125 years.”
“That’s what these people are all about,” Colman said. “They’re just amazing, good, strong people. The committee we have has a psychiatrist, a lawyer, an investment banker, a manufacturing president, a former McDonald’s exec, a retired bank president — it’s just this big wonderful group, and it’s been an interesting experience to work with these people.
“It’s also been tiring because we’re all devoting an awful lot of time to this. We’re hoping over the next three weeks we’ll have some sort of resolution to this.
“We’ll see what happens.”