BRUNSWICK — A project underway at Bowdoin College will bring students and community members closer to the stars.
The college’s 134-year-old observatory had sat unused near the campus athletic fields for three decades. A sizable donation from a Bowdoin family has allowed the college to move the structure in its entirety to the middle of the athletic grounds in Pickard Field and outfit it with a new 3-ton steel dome and a mounted telescope shipped in from Austria.
Now about two years into the process of fundraising and refurbishing the observatory, the college hopes to officially open it this spring. The ultimate goal is to host classes in the observatory and eventually have some public events, explained Fe McBride, the physics professor leading the observatory project.
McBride, who was hired in 2022 to revamp the college’s previously neglected astronomy program, hopes the chance to view the cosmos will make more young people interested in the studies of physics and astronomy.
“People think you have to be an Albert Einstein–level genius in order to break through physics. This is not so much the case for astronomy,” she said. “We hope we can draw interest from people who would generally be afraid of physics.”
A classroom was also constructed adjacent to the observatory. Here, students will evaluate images taken by the telescope’s camera and conduct research projects.
“[The classroom] was designed for both the classes, but then also we had in mind public outreach, whether it’s student outreach to non-astronomy majors that maybe lure them into physics and astronomy, or just interest groups, whether it’s family groups or other opportunities,” said John Simoneau, Bowdoin’s director of capital projects.
In addition to the large telescope housed inside the dome, there is an outdoor terrace with steel mounts used for five smaller telescopes.
Some astronomy and physics students have already used the small telescopes, while McBride and her team are still working out the bugs of the main telescope.
There were challenges along the way — first, the dome refused to close and McBride had to install new firmware. Now, the telescope is having trouble communicating with a computer. The trial and error is all a part of the process, or the “commissioning phase,” which typically takes weeks to months in these types of projects, McBride said.
“This is sort of like any new machine. We plug it in and nothing works,” McBride said.
The observatory was originally built in the center of campus in 1891. It was relocated in the 1920s — most likely taken apart brick by brick and reconstructed, though there’s little record of the move — to the corner of the athletic grounds. However, it became unusable in the 1990s as pine trees grew and obstructed its view. The original telescope was taken out and the empty shell sat unused until Seeyan Lam, father of alum Benjamin Hill-Lam, took notice.
Lam made a gift in honor of his son, a physics major and rocket fuel engineer who died in a rock climbing accident in 2021 at the age of 30. The donation covered the new telescope and much of the renovation and maintenance of the observatory, which is now named after Hill-Lam.
“We couldn’t have done this project without our donor, Seeyan Lam, in honor of Benjamin Hill-Lam, who I never had the pleasure of meeting … we’re so grateful for that support; that was very surprising for us,” McBride said.
The most crucial part of the telescope is its camera, McBride said. While you can see planets and stars with the naked eye through its eyepiece, cameras can use long exposure times to capture more light than human eyes can.
This process may help students make discoveries like exoplanets — planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system — by observing when stars periodically darken with the orbit of the planet, McBride said.
McBride regularly posts updates about the observatory and invites the public to observing sessions on the @bowdoinobservatory Instagram page.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Katie Langley can be reached at [email protected].
