Observatory (1880—c.1915)
Astronomical Observatory, likely circa 1913. Photo Credit: Beal, p. 74.
The College’s first Astronomical Observatory was a useful addition to the campus when it was completed in 1880, but until very recently had long been a forgotten part of M.A.C. history. The modest building with its equatorially mounted telescope gets a brief mention by Kuhn, but only Beal gives it more than a single sentence:
Professor R. C. Carpenter deserves credit for getting a telescope and accessories in good working trim at the College. The instrument is a fine one; it is mounted to move by clockwork, and although rather small—the lens only 5½ inches, was manufactured by the celebrated firm of Alvan Clark & Son. The observatory, located just northwest of the professor’s residence, is of brick, with movable roof.[Beal, p. 75]
As Professor of Mathematics, Rolla Carpenter lived in Faculty Row № 2, and the Observatory was virtually in the Professor’s back yard—although his own description of that position was “on the hill northeast of President Abbot’s house” next door. The building was circular in plan with an external diameter of sixteen feet and nine-foot-high walls, and took about ten weeks to construct. Its brick work was done by an unnamed “mechanic from Lansing” while carpentry was done by students under Carpenter’s supervision. (Since astronomy was not yet in the course catalog, his 1880 report to the Board described the building in detail but left the telescope for a later report.)[19th AR (1880), p. 58–59]
Its later existence is unclear to this author. The building appears on Newman’s 1915 map but suffered an act of vandalism that year which left “only the telescope” intact, and “subsequent catalogs describe an astronomy course but omit any references to the observatory.” It does not appear on a campus map of 1926, and it was certainly gone by 1937, when Sarah Langdon Williams Hall was built near its former site. After decades forgotten in storage in the Physics–Astronomy Building, the Clark telescope was rediscovered in the mid-1970s and saved. It is now in the collection of the Abrams Planetarium.[MSU Alumni Magazine, winter 2004, p. 5]
Today, the M.S.U. Observatory stands north of the intersection of Forest and College Roads. Its 24-inch telescope, built by the Boller and Chivens Division of the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, was commissioned in 1969. Its Raytheon Microcomputer data gathering and control system was state-of-the-art when it was installed in 1974. Since the 1980s the telescope has employed a charge-coupled device for image gathering.
Astronomical Observatory, circa 1888, from a collection of photos taken by R. C. Carpenter. Although no identification is given for the students in the photo, the bearded man standing at center is Professor Carpenter himself, and the sole woman (seated to his left) may be his sister Mary Lucy Carpenter (M.A.C. ’88), one of the Twenty-One. Photo Credit: M.S.U. Archives.
In summer 2023, workers from Infrastructure Planning and Facilities were installing hammock posts behind the North Neighborhood residence halls when they struck something “hard and impenetrable.” They called in archaeologists from the Campus Archaeology Program who quickly determined that they had stumbled onto the buried foundation of the original observatory. An exploratory dig revealed field-stone-and-mortar construction, along with a few artifacts including square-cut nails and fragments of red brick. CAP plans to focus on the site for its biennial field school in summer 2024.[MSU Today, 2 Aug 2023]
