The Columbus Astronomical Society
The Columbus Astronomical Society
1 The OSU Department of Physics and Astronomy (a separate Department of Astronomy was not created until 1960) used the patrol camera at Perkins for comet and variable star patrolling throughout the 1950's. In the early 1960's the lens, an excellent 1000 mm Zeiss aerial camera lens brought back from Germany as war booty, was removed by OSU for use in another instrument. The camera body moldered in an attic at Perkins for 15 years until it was discovered there in 1977 by a group of Society members. OSU agreed to return it to the Society and it was stored in Borror Observatory for another 15 years before finally being scrapped.
2 One of the best Society telescopes was another piece of war booty, a splendid 6" Zeiss refractor brought back from Germany by ex-GI Kenneth Walker. Immediately after the war, when American forces were being pulled back from what was to become the Russian Zone, some Zeiss engineers in Leipzig used the instrument to pay Walker for a ride in his supply truck back to the American Zone.
3 Thus was born the "CAS Scrapbook," a collection of newspaper clippings, correspondence, documents, and other items of Society history that has been maintained, with some lengthy lapses, to this day.
4 Unfortunately the original copy of this document, bearing the signatures of the 1953 membership, has long since been lost.
5 The mirror of this great instrument is now on display at COSI. OSU moved the telescope body to Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona, where it is still in use today with a 72" mirror. The telescope's huge cement pier in the Perkins dome now supports nothing but a night-light.
6 President Jim Knight resigned his post and followed Hynek to the SAO, where he headed up equipment acquisition for Moonwatch. He later managed the Moonwatch stations in Cadiz, Spain and Johannesburg, South Africa.
7 The IRDC is long gone but the building still stands at 797 Thomas Lane Road, just to the west of Riverside Hospital. It now serves as the hospital's Family Practice Center. The small room on the roof of the building was the actual Moonwatch station.
8 The site of Kraus' great instrument, on the southwest corner of Ackerman and Kenny Roads, is now an OSU agricultural field. The remnants of its concrete piers can still be seen there, shrouded in vegetation.
9 McMillin's splendid 12 1/2 inch Brashear refractor, built in 1885, was mothballed by OSU until June, 1976 when it was given to the Fostoria Astronomical Society. The FAS was unable to raise funds to build an observatory for it, so in 1984 it gave the instrument to Heidelberg University, which built a domed observatory just north of Tiffin. The telescope was rededicated on September 28, 1984 and today is engaged in a busy schedule of astronomy classes and public programs. The Mirror Lake Amphitheater at OSU was built with the same grant that financed McMillin. Today the amphitheater and the annual McMillin Lecture In Astronomy at OSU are all that remain of Emerson McMillin's bequest to the University.
10 Steadman Thompson is possibly the most colorful figure in the history of the Society. He was also one of the most active members in the history of the Society and his presence would be sorely missed in the coming years. He left Columbus for San Francisco but his fate since then is a matter of some dispute. He was reported to have died under uncertain circumstances in the Haight-Asbury in November of 1968, but several Society members claim to have been contacted by "Stead" in the years since, so his legend continues. In January, 1956 he purchased the first and to date only life membership in the Society (the Society ceased selling life memberships in 1981), so the still-open question of whether Stead is dead is not entirely academic.
11 After the December meeting the site was changed back to Battelle because the COSI area "provided limited opportunities for refreshments afterwards" (This explanation was proffered in the January Prime Focus by Bud Stewart, who along with some other senior members was known to be partial to the Varsity Club on Lane Ave.).
12 The same issue shows members Verne Hovland and Jane Gann in the group picture at the Astronomical League's national convention in Milwaukee.
13 Hynek remained at Northwestern until his retirement in 1978. He died on May 1, 1986, after a distinguished career. In addition to his chairmanship of the astronomy departments at OSU and Northwestern and his salutary work on the Moonwatch program, he was also heavily involved in the Air Force's fabled Project Blue Book. His interest in UFO's continued after the end of Project Blue Book and led him, in 1973, to found the Center For UFO Studies, which has become the world's primary private UFO investigatory organization (supposedly the CUFOS' investigators provided the inspiration for the TV series "The X Files"). Unfortunately for Hynek's memory, his curiosity about the UFO phenomenon has overshadowed everything else and earned him a reputation in many circles as a flake.
14 So-called because the initial meeting of the "revolutionaries" in January was held in the Pizza Hut on the corner of Lane Avenue and North Star Road.
15 The interior of the observatory was given a much-needed coat of paint by some Society members using paint donated by a local merchant, but beggers can't be choosers: The color of the donated paint was purple. Fortunately, most people only saw the inside of Borror when it was dark. Construction began in the spring of 1978 of a large radio telescope on the Borror grounds. Financed and built by a consortium of Society members, the design was flawed and rendered the instrument so sensitive to temperature variations that any extraterrestrial signals were hopelessly drowned out. One member of the consortium later summed it up by saying that the telescope "was the world's most expensive thermometer."
16 Years later, when the hard feelings had dissipated, the events of that night would be dubbed "The Borror Coup D'Etat." Along with the "Pizza Hut Putsch" it has become much-celebrated in Society folklore, although in both cases the reality is that the behavior of many of the participants was quite childish. In 1984, with much free legal help from attorney and Society member Mike Allerding, the Society finally did obtain the non-profit status that had been the primary motivation of the new constitution of 1980. That status was never utilized and it was eventually allowed to lapse.
17 It was also the last hurrah for the OSU Astronomy Club. Founded in 1968, this club was extraordinarily active in the 1970's and fed a steady stream of active members into the Society (Brent Archinal, Dick Suiter, John Kerns, Doug Wereb, Tony Hohenbrink, and Carl Wenning among others), but in 1983 it fell under the sway of several politically radical officers and became less active in astronomy than it was in politics. It was forced out of existence by the OSU Department of Astronomy in 1984.
18 The complete story of this splendid instrument can be found in Dr. Brent Archinal's fine history, The Stewart Telescope Of The Columbus Astronomical Society.
19 The "Observatory With an Attitude" still survives: Boarded up in 1983, Borror was partially renovated by the YMCA in the fall of 1986 and Society member Bob Bunge overhauled the mothballed telescope later that winter. The observatory was rededicated in April, 1987, and Bunge began running monthly public nights there shortly thereafter, but in all of this Bunge was acting as an agent of the park management - the Society itself is not in any way involved.
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