Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 7, 1994 TAG: 9409070057
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
Hauling several hundred pounds of telescope to the top of the D.C. Wysor Observatory was a piece of cake compared to getting it mounted inside the dome.
The reinstalled telescope will be dedicated at 1 p.m. Sept. 23 at the observatory on the Dublin Elementary School grounds.
The telescope has been on display in the D.C. Wysor Museum, in the bottom part of the building, since a fall from its mount several years ago destroyed some of its more delicate parts. Meanwhile, the school borrowed a smaller telescope from Virginia Tech.
But the original telescope, made in 1937 according to a date on the instrument, caught the attention of Bob Curran, an astronomy buff who works for Honeywell Inc. out of Minneapolis, Minn.
Honeywell was interested in securing a contract with the Pulaski County school system for an energy management program. When it did, Curran suggested the company make the telescope repairs free as a good-will gesture.
``They just did it as a labor of love. It had nothing to do with their contract with us,'' said Superintendent Bill Asbury.
Wysor, a Pulaski County native who became a world-traveling geologist, built the observatory and museum with its many mineral samples and other exhibits to foster science education in his home county.
He had his telescope brought here to be part of the observatory. The Wysor facility was built in 1968, the same year as the elementary school.
Asbury said school officials are trying to open the museum and observatory more often so students can have access to it, as well as the public - which is what Wysor really wanted. Until now, it has been open only by appointment.
``For the first time, we're really going to tie it in to our instructional program,'' including the school system's math, science and technology program and the Southwest Virginia Governor's School which has some computer links with county schools, Asbury said. A Governor's School faculty member, Rick Fisher, is curator of the museum and observatory.
Access to the observatory is by a narrow, winding metal stairway, much too small to lug the telescope and its weighted counter-balance up to the top. The only way it could get back up was the same way it was taken out, by mechanical crane. The 30-ton machine used this time was provided by DeBusk & Shelor Inc. of Dublin.
The job started shortly after 3 p.m. Aug. 23 and took between four and five hours to complete.
The mechanism was raised on the crane and inserted into the opening of the observatory dome with no problem, but angling the 500-pound scope and counterweight so that it meshed with the gears of the mounting proved more difficult.
Several men wrestled it to within a fraction of an inch of the mounting gear, but it would not quite mesh. Fisher finally suggested that the telescope's mirrors and lenses, which had not yet been reinstalled, might provide the extra weight to make everything click.
He was right.
by CNB