It is unlikely that you will ever be within reach of a star, or visit the moons of Jupiter, or touch the cracked and cratered surface of Mercury. Humans are, still, largely confined to the wonders and physicalities of Earth. But, for the past 48 years, the University of Toledo has allowed people to momentarily forget the limits of space, and experience what it would be like to see worlds other than ours.
The Ritter Observatory
Toledo is home to the largest American telescope east of the Mississippi River. It sits in the Ritter Observatory: a large, retractable, rotatable dome that stands alongside Bancroft Street on the University of Toledo campus. The telescope looks like a small rocket; an iron tube fitted with gears and levers that balance so perfectly that you can maneuver the telescope’s full weight— 35,000 pounds— with the push of a finger. The heart of the telescope is its mirror. At the telescope’s base, it is 41 inches in diameter, eight inches thick and weighs half a ton. It was built by Owens-Illinois in 1967, and is re-aluminized every five to six years in order to maintain its reflective properties. It has the ability to reveal the sky’s resolution so sharply that you can see the ice caps on the northern pole of Mars.
A strangely convenient location
Most large telescopes are found in undisturbed deserts or on tops of mountains. But the primary benefactor for Toledo’s telescope, George Ritter, a 1940s Jeep executive and 1960s City Law Director, wanted it to be built within city limits, an unconventional place to see the clear night sky. The Ritter Observatory is limited by city light disturbance— galaxies can be diffused beyond recognition— but it has the rare advantage of easy access.
Cody Gerhartz, an astronomy Ph.D. student at UT, has an office, with all of his research, on the first floor of the observatory building— just a 4-floor elevator ride away from the telescope. To take advantage of this access, Gerhartz and others on the UT faculty have become specialized in stellar spectroscopy. It is a longitudinal form of research— a current study on gas properties is in its 7th year— that examines the chemical composition and temperature of stars. The UT faculty view stars frequently. Someone is in the observatory every single night. And over a long period of time, they begin to understand what stars are made of, and how they change as they age. Or, as Alex Mak, the Associate Director of the Ritter Planetarium, told me, “they study the fingerprint of star light.”
The Planetarium
Four years ago, the 92-seat Ritter Planetarium went through a $500,000 upgrade. Now, in the same building as the Observatory, you can view incredible renderings of interstellar travel through a dual XD projector that shoots 7 million pixels onto a 40-foot, 360 degree, domed screen. “It completely revolutionized our programming,” says Mak.
In the summer, the Planetarium presents shows every Friday, followed by public trips up to the Observatory on the first Friday of the month. The shows, intricate and expertly made, with some actually made at The University of Toledo. Its last production, a cute and educational wintertime story called “Santa’s Secret Star,” took 9 months and 100 computers to design and render its 25 runtime minutes.
The show I watched took me to the surface of the sun, spread before me 20-feet wide, and then took me closer and closer until I watched a field of hydrogen atoms skitter like small, bouncing campfires. The Planetarium’s images are so fluid, so lushly riveting, that to witness them feels like more than simple viewing. Chey Call, a local realtor who regularly visits the Planetarium with her grandchildren, told me, “It’s not like going to the movies, it’s an experience.”
2855 W. Bancroft St., 419-530-2650.
utoledo.edu/nsm/rpbo
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Dorian Slaybod is an attorney
happily living in Toledo.
