[getsmart-l] As far away as Thunder Bay - Editorial on the David Dunlap Observatory

[Gloria Boxen]

The David Dunlap Observatory is of national importance.  It is still the largest telescope in Canada and collaborates in international research studies.  It's demise would leave a hole in the global collection of data.  The David Dunlap Observatory also collects data for NASA.   With modern electronics, its capabilities are far greater than when first opened in 1935 under dark skies. Light pollution for the DDO is a red herring.

Gloria Boxen

John O'Gorman <jcogorman at sympatico.ca> wrote:        
 ----- Original Message -----  From: M Yake 
 To: Marianne Yake 
 Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 9:58 AM
 Subject: Thunder Bay Editorial on the David Dunlap  Observatory

 

http://www.chroniclejournal.com/stories.php?id=98699

 Editorials
 Look to the skies for our  future
By The Chronicle-Journal
Wednesday, March 19,  2008


 The story of the David Dunlap Observatory is indeed an exciting one that  rivals the story of the race to the moon of the 1960s. 

 After the First World War, an enterprising and determined physics professor  named Clarence Chant approached a mining magnate (Dunlap) about installing a  huge telescope a short drive north of Toronto – before farms in the vicinity of  the provincial capital became over-run by subdivisions and, yes, street lights.  
After many fits , starts and disappointments, the observatory was finally  opened in 1935, becoming home to what was then the second-largest telescope in  the world. 

 It was truly a stunning facility, located in what was at the time  considered the sticks, the middle of nowhere. 

 By then Chant was no longer a young man. He was 70 years old. But he had  believed in his dream and, amazingly, it had come true. 

 Though the Dunlap Observatory helped put Hogtown on the map and became  renowned the world over for important astronomical discoveries, its  effectiveness had by the 1960s started to dim due to what astronomers call  “light pollution” – the urban night-time glare that gets in the way of a clear  view to the heavens. 
Last fall, the University of Toronto put the Dunlap up  for sale. 

 Children growing up in the GTA these days would be hard-pressed to spot a  shooting star or point out the location of Venus or other highly-visible  planets. 
Not so in Thunder Bay and other Northwestern Ontario locales, where  one doesn‘t have to be an amateur astronomer to point out Mars, or Saturn‘s  rings, when peering up into an evening Northern sky. 

 Even if Thunder Bay manages to hold its own economically over the coming  decades, urban sprawl and light pollution probably won‘t be something the city  will ever have to worry about. It‘s a city that has a lot of potential, but also  one that will need all the help it can get as it struggles to diversify its  economy and its public institutions. 

 Some would probably consider a Northern observatory as wildly unattainable  (just like the naysayers of Chant‘s era), but we have a clear advantage over  other more prosperous jurisdictions: when the sun goes down, it still gets dark.  

 Chant was a scientist and Dunlap a businessman; but the two men shared a  vision that few others in their time thought was worth the trouble. Yet they  left an indelible mark, and their town and country benefited enormously.  




            Copyright © Tuesday, April 8,        2008 All material contained herein is copyrighted by         The Chronicle Journal, a        division of Continental Newspapers Canada Ltd.        All Rights    Reserved.  

  
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