Over 100 years after the city welcomed its first observatory, in 1854, people continue to flock down to the facility to learn more about the starry night sky.
The current observatory is at Ellis Hall at Queen’s University in Kingston.
In the 1800s, an observatory was located at City Park. But there are no photos to prove an observatory actually stood there. Instead a plaque from the Ontario Heritage Foundation is the only evidence of Kingston’s astronomical beginnings.
“People have looked and they could not find any,” said Bernard Ziomkiewiez, a retired staff member at the university who was responsible for maintaining the current facility.
A map inside the Sterling Hall foyer on campus indicates where the original observatory used to be. There are artifacts from the original site, including telescopes, one which operated with a clockwork mechanism to rotate against the earth’s axis, keeping things in focus for the user.
Ziomkiewiez said the site of the original observatory moved from City Park to the university in the early 1900s. It stood there until it was torn down to make way for a building. Another observatory built by Nathan Dupuis met the same fate in the 1940s. The current observatory was built in the 1960s.
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“That observatory is used for some student labs (and) for outreach. A lot of visiting groups come by,” Ziomkiewiez said. “Every month there is an open house for the general public, where people will come and… hear a talk about astronomy.”
A rotating dome and an automatic telescope make up the observatory in Ellis Hall. The public is invited to open houses on the Saturday of every month when they can look through the telescope.
Lawrence Faria, a student at the university and one of the coordinators of the observatory, said the feedback received from these open houses have been great. As someone studying the field, he noted being a part of the observatory is a fruitful experience.
“I think everyone would agree that as astronomers we have the coolest jobs. Everyone wishes they can spend all night looking up at the stars. And that’s basically what we get to do,” he said. “It’s a really magical thing to peel back the fabrics of the universe and see the answers that lie there.”
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