
U. of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory to close after 120 years - wglb
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-yerkes-observatory-closing-20180308-story.html
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closeparen
Yerkes is a special place. I had the privilege of spending the night there as
a student, and while I know nothing about astronomy, it was one of the
highlights of my undergrad. The gorgeous grounds, the fairytale/museum
architecture, the creepy catwalks and spiral staircases connecting the
telescopes, the computer room filled with VAXen (only time I’ve seen a VT200
in person), and the welcoming staff made it a hell of a trip. Yerkes embodies
the hacker ethos. There’s automation around each telescope still in operation
that’s clearly built by staff familiar with Arduinos and home automation
rather than some government contractor. The platforms of the domes rotate; one
of them is rigged with a handheld barcode scanner to find its place among the
labels taped to the outside wall. Clever mixes of the original early-20th-
century electrical control panels and 2010s electronics abound.

My friends in astrophysics have worked on equipment in its basement machine
shop that is now in space. All of them credit Yerkes with motivating them to
enter or stay in the field. There is enormous backlash on social media, and a
glimmer of hope that Yerkes might operate in substantially the same way
independently or under different ownership.

I’m deeply skeptical of historic preservation, but if there were ever a place
that needed to be landmarked, it’s this one.

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Jun8
Can you provide links to discussion on plans to keep it operating, e.g. under
different ownership? Is there anything the Chicago HN community can help with?

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closeparen
Most of the student outreach is a pathos appeal under #saveyerkes on Facebook
and Twitter, but this comment from one of the directors on its Facebook page
indicates that there might be more substantive plans in the works [0].

[0]
[https://www.facebook.com/YerkesObservatory/posts/10156061540...](https://www.facebook.com/YerkesObservatory/posts/10156061540746420?comment_id=10156062951446420&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D)

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auntienomen
Rather sad news. I hope they do something better with the place than build
condos. It's a gorgeous tract and a gorgeous building.

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bobochan
That is a shame. My great-grandfather was an astronomer there when it opened
in 1897. It has a long history of important research.

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rmaus
Fascinating, did he work there long enough to know Edwin Hubble?

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bobochan
Well, after doing a little more research it seems that if they had any
overlap, it would have been exceedingly brief. Hubble was working on his first
paper at Yerkes in 1915 just at a time when a number of older astronomers,
including my great-grandfather, were retiring.

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blacksqr
Should be turned into a hacker space for amateur astronomers.

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toomuchtodo
Is anyone interested in having an HN meetup for a science tour prior to
closure? I will be taking my family next month, but wouldn't mind arranging
something for those HN readers in the area.

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hdevarajan
I would and kind of you to propose.

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ncraig
That's the end of an era - Yerkes has the largest refracting telescope ever
built.

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bg4
Could they turn it into a museum and planetarium? Such a beautiful building.

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Jun8
This Chicago Tribune article from 5 years ago
([http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-13/news/ct-met-
ye...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-13/news/ct-met-yerkes-
observatory-20130213_1_yerkes-observatory-research-telescopes-astronomy))
gives more details and actually made me quite pessimistic about the future of
the building. It says the yearly costs were (then) $400k and that the
University floated plans to convert the area and building into luxury condos,
only stopped by the local community. Whenever there’s so much potential for
making money (on the order of tens of millions of dollars) it’s pretty much
inevitable that it will happen sooner or later.

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Jun8
As others have said this is incredibly sad, I guess the best case scenario at
this point is for it to be a condo, at least the great building can be saved.

But what really puzzles me is that how this great resource cannot be put to
better use. Yes, the telescope may "no longer contribute directly to the
research mission" but it still blows your $300 home telescope _out of the
water_! I, for one, would pay at least $250 a night for a modest room if I am
allowed to use that beast (with supervision, of course). I guess there would
be tons of amateur astronomers who would feel the same.

I understand U of C does not have the bandwidth to do this, but why doesn't a
local startup/philanthropist/whatever step up?

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astrodust
It's too bad that space-based telescopes are so rare. Imagine if an
observatory like this was just an uplink to a satellite in space. That
preserves the history and institution while keeping it current in terms of
technology.

