Yerkes Observatory to become luxury spa

When I saw this on cnn.com, it reminded me of what has been going on around Dunsink...

The 109-year-old Yerkes Observatory, where astronomers discovered the Milky Way galaxy's spiral shape and made other advances, will become an anchor for a spa and luxury homes, the University of Chicago, its owner, announced on Wednesday.

Thirty of the 80 acres (32 hectares) along Lake Geneva in Wisconsin that surround the ornate, stone observatory housing what was once the world's largest telescope will remain undeveloped.

Private developer Mirbeau Cos. agreed to pay the university $8 million and a share of room and property taxes for rights to build a 100-room spa and 72 luxury homes.

While scientific advances and light pollution reduced the observatory's usefulness in recent decades, some of astronomy's leading lights once worked there.

Edwin Hubble, who would go on to find evidence of the Big Bang theory, studied at Yerkes, as did Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who made discoveries about the evolution of stars. Beginning work at Yerkes in the 1930s, William Morgan would deduce the spiral shape of the Milky Way.

Seanie.

Very sad to see

BTW, what is the latest on Dunsink?

Just like London Planetarium,no real stars anymore, just stars of screen and stage and the sports arena. The "celebrity" wins over the celestial and a world famous London landmark is gone forever.

Looks like astronomical building all over the world aren't worth much to the local governments, and we though Dunsink closing was bad!

What is also a shame is the apparent lack of understanding as to how these structures have succumbed to being shelved like this, no matter where they are - improper city planning, and with that probably illegal or out-of-character development (who's got the biggest brown envelope?), light pollution, and lack of promotion. A small tragedy in my opinion.

Yerkes is only a few miles from my home town. It's a beautiful observatory on a wooded and grassy hill overlooking a deep blue glacial lake and one of the more exclusive exburbs of Chicago. It is a shame to see it go as a victim of light pollution, the decline of interest in U.S. science education and a property development madness second only to what we see here. The bidder who came in second place was an adjacent "college" where I learned to sail. It was something like a boy scout camp. Their plan was to only develop a couple of acres of the 80 acre plot and use the tax revenue from that to pay the village enough to maintain the observatory. The New York developer who won the bid apparently had a more aggressive and possibly more financially sustainable plan.

I hope somehow this beautiful educational resource will be maintained and restored at least as well as the Leviathan at Birr. The last time I saw it was during a clouded out Leonid watch in 1999. Its location within 50 miles of 5 million people is horrible for astronomy, but would be a great educational resource. It certainly meets the public expectation of what an observatory should look like, a long refractor tube, the floor rises to bring (usually mad scientist to eyepiece, the dome is so huge that when it rotates it gives the illusion that you are rotating! You'll find more information on yerkes here www.saveyerkes.com

Maybe we can learn from this, Dunsink and Yerkes have many things in common.