Chaminade dome searches the sky

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

Professor David Cooke and student Lilinoi Grace admire one of two telescopes at the new Chaminade observatory. Photos by Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

The little observatory — dubbed "Mini Mauna Kea" on campus — will put Chaminade on the astronomy map with two high-precision, tracking-mounted telescopes that can, with guidance from a computer, track incoming objects, find planets in the heavens, or pick up a satellite or the space shuttle and follow it across the sky.

It's the first observatory at a Hawai'i college outside the University of Hawai'i system.

"It's the only school-based facility possessing an active tracking capability in Hawai'i," said professor David Cooke, chair of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics Division, who wrote the grant to get the dome financial support — even though he did it on a whim. "It's clearly not in the same league as the Big Island or Mauna Kea, but UH (Manoa) doesn't have a facility like this on campus."

"We have considered inviting UH students up because this offers hands-on experience," said Peter Wolf, director of community relations.

With a hobbit-sized door, and barely enough room inside for a teacher and a handful of students, the 10-foot-high Wiegand Observatory — the official name — will nonetheless offer Chaminade science students their first chance at true hands-on experience as astronomers. Even at Mauna Kea much of the astronomy is done via computers with distant link-ups. The first class to use the Chaminade observatory will begin in the next two weeks, with summer school students taking preliminary astronomy courses.

But it will also offer local schoolchildren and the community something called "star parties" — opportunities to visit the site and peer into the skies, too, at the invitation of Chaminade. While it's possible for amateur astronomers to have telescopes of this size (they're 8-inch and 12-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes) what is unusual is the high-precision tracking mount.

Although Cooke now considers the new observatory an important addition to the physics and science program at Chaminade, the fact that it exists at all was a fluke.

Cooke added the concept of building a small observatory with cutting-edge telescopes into a grant application for a science lab to the Keck Foundation, never expecting it to be accepted. While Keck did turn it down, the application was forwarded to other institutions and received a welcome "yes" from the Wiegand Foundation in Reno, Nev. A computer lab also supported by the foundation as part of the grant — now called the Wiegand Lab — is down the hill and will be linked by computer to the observatory once fiber optic cables are laid in the next month.

Even with approximately $80,000 from the foundation, Hawai'i architect Joseph Lancor provided his labor for free to design the compact facility. Lancor, both architect and astronomer, has built half a dozen observatories, most in California.

Professor David Cooke opens the door of Chaminade University's new observatory, high on a ridge above the school's campus.

Pointed due south, the observatory was carefully positioned to take advantage of its prime location on the edge of the Kalaepohaku ridge overlooking Palolo and, in the distance, Diamond Head. But just as important was situating the sliding viewing door high enough not to intrude on the privacy of nearby neighbors.

"The last thing we want to do is have the neighbors think we're looking through their windows," said Cooke.

As Cooke stoops to step inside the facility, two powerful telescopes are pointed toward the skies. "We're at a low latitude with a horizon to the south, very good for viewing," he said, rotating the dome and positioning the scopes by computer.

With a dull roar the skyward door slides open and the scope positions itself to do what he has asked it to do — find Jupiter. And then the moon.

"The telescopes are mounted on a special high-precision mount that is capable of very precisely pointing them at any object in the night sky," said Cooke. "The mount is also capable of tracking spacecraft through daytime skies."

The mounting was done with exacting precision by contractor Gary Cordery, Lancor said.

As Cooke explains the telescope, physics and chemistry major Lilinoi Grace, 21, lines up her eye with a lens to see if she can pick out the elusive planet. Grace, a Chaminade junior from the same area on the Big island as the late Hawai'i astronaut Ellison Onizuka, has also set her sights on becoming an astronaut. She'll learn to pilot a small airplane this summer, and add an astronomy course in the fall to use the telescopes.

"When I was at Konawaena High, I went to space school and met Neil Armstrong and John Glenn," Grace said. "When I first came to college I didn't know what I wanted to do, but now I do."