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The Story of the Sky
By Brendan Gallian
FIG. 1: The University of Illinois current observatory shortly after its opening, c. 1897. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives.
In the centuries before the electric lightbulb gained prominence, the skies above Champaign County contained a rich tapestry of stars, planets, and even a small slice of the Milky Way Galaxy. Even though most of this celestial glow is no longer visible from the Champaign-Urbana area, the sky above is still the same as it has always been.
When the Myaamia (Miami) people, one of the many indigenous groups that hunted in the area, looked up at the night sky, they saw the fisher, aciika, and the fisher star, aciika alaankwa (1) (2). The fisher was a Myaamia constellation representing a small animal of the same name, that once inhabited the state (3).
They believed that aciika, the fisher, had lost its head, and was wandering around the fisher star, aciika alaankwa, in search of it (3). The fisher star also proved a useful navigational aid for the people, who could rely on its stead position in the northern sky to find their way (3).
The fisher and fisher star are some of the few objects still visible in the skies above the county’s urban areas today. They are better known as the Big Dipper and Polaris (3).
In 1833, just nine months after the county was established (founded?), one of the most memorable astronomical events in recorded history took place (4).
On the evening of November 12th and into the morning of the 13th, the skies across the country were illuminated with hundreds of thousands of meteors (5).
While no surviving records exist from the county’s earliest permanent residents, such as the Buseys, they likely experienced the spectacle in the fashion as the rest of the country, with a mix of amazement and fear.
100 miles west, in New Salem, future president Abraham Lincoln witnessed the shower, woken by a church deacon who claimed that the stars were falling and the world was ending (6). Lincoln, sharp as always even after being jolted awake, noticed that the constellations above remained in place. He relayed this story later in life during the Civil War, ending with the message, “the world did not come to an end then, nor will the Union now” (6).
The Leonid Meteor Shower occurs annually every November, but in some years, like 1833, the event produces many more meteors than normal (7). These “meteor storms” happen roughly once every 33 years, with the next one due in 2035 (7) (8).
The first astronomy class offered at the University of Illinois, known as Illinois Industrial University at the time, was “Descriptive Astronomy.” The course was first taught in 1868, the same year that the school opened, but the first campus observatory didn’t open until 1872 (9).
FIG. 2: The classes offered at Illinois Industrial University in 1871. The only astronomy class offered at the time was “practical astronomy.” The Student, 1 November 1871. Photo courtesy of the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection
The first campus observatory, a “queer bob-tail house,” was located near the Mechanical Building, which stood where Springfield and Mathews meet today (10) (11) (12).
The University has overseen the construction of six major observatories over the years, but the current Campus Observatory is the only one that remains. The rest were plagued by a series of issues both serious and almost comical in nature.
On the night of October 24, 1874, a group gathered at the first campus observatory to view a lunar eclipse. The group found the observatory locked, and the key was held by a professor who was in Bloomington at the time, forcing the group to view the eclipse with their naked eyes (13).
That observatory was replaced twice over the next 25 years: first by a small, ill-equipped building near University Hall (now the Illini Union), and second by a much larger facility near the Morrow Plots (14) (9).
FIG. 3: The floor plan for the current University of Illinois observatory, c. 1897. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives.
Construction on the third campus observatory began in April of 1896 and was completed by August (15). The observatory still operates today, over 127 years later. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989, making it one of only two campus sites to receive the designation (the other being the neighboring Morrow Plots) (16) (17).
The observatory opened under the direction of Professor George William Myers, whose first test was to use the observatory to find its own latitude and longitude (15) (17). Succeeding in that, he began to study the star Beta Lyrae using the observatory’s 12-inch equatorial refracting telescope (15).
Dr. Joel Stebbins assumed control of the observatory from Myers in 1903 and was quick to institute some major changes (15). Stebbins, finding no independent astronomy department, was forced to spend $8 out of his own pocket on observational equipment (18). Stebbins lobbied for an operating budget to be established to keep the observatory working, and in 1905, was granted $750 for just this purpose (15).
Two years later, Stebbins began to work with Fay C. Brown using selenium cells to measure brightness. Brown demonstrated that the cells could be used to transform light into an electrical signal, which in turn could be measured. The duo attached a cell to the 12-inch telescope and tested the cells using the moon. The experiment was successful, and for the first time on American soil, electricity was used to measure the brightness of a celestial object (19) (15).
Over the next few years, Stebbins used selenium cell photometry to study Halley’s Comet and several eclipsing binary star systems – systems in which multiple stars pass in front of each other, leading to a measurable change in brightness (15) (20).
In 1912, Physicist Jakob Kunz observed the star Capella using photoelectric cells in place of selenium cells. The photoelectric cells worked in the same way as the selenium ones but proved to be much more powerful (15).
FIG. 4: The University of Illinois’ 12-inch telescope equipped with an early photometer, c. 1910. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives.
Stibbens worked with Kunz to develop a better photoelectric photometer, which was quickly copied by observatories across the country. The new photometer was even taken to Wyoming in 1918 to measure the brightness of the sun’s corona during an eclipse (15) (21).
The first true auxiliary observatory opened in 1925 (15). A 30-inch telescope, which had been housed in a smaller building near the main observatory, was rebuilt on site along South Florida Avenue, approximately where Illinois Field is today (9) (22).
The University continued with the primary and south observatories while Great Depression and wartime budget cuts hampered the scientific progress that had defined the early years of the facility. Things began to change in 1954, with the arrival of new Astronomy Department Chairman George Cunliff McVittie (15).
McVittie oversaw the first major expansion of the Campus Observatory and established the radio astronomy program within his first three years (15) (9). A third observatory, one built for radio astronomy, was also planned (23).
The department under McVittie was a revelation in terms of growth and progress, but many who were there also recall the early McVittie years as a lot of fun. The observatory received frequent phone calls from concerned citizens asking about an object that they had just seen above. These calls proved to be a mixture of both amusement for students and staff, and annoyance for whoever had picked up the phone (24).
No project encapsulates McVittie’s department better than the Vermillion River Observatory.
FIG. 5: George McVittie, Robert Hanbury Brown, Rudolph Mikowski, and George Swensen (L-R) at the Vermillion River radio telescope, c. 1960. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives
Electrical engineering professor George Swenson was handed the task of building the radio observatory, and once the site – a swath of land near the Vermillion River, southeast of Danville – was chosen, Swenson decided that the observatory building was to be a log cabin (23).
Swenson figured that since the site had to be cleared of hundreds of trees anyway, reusing them to build a log cabin would reduce costs (23). The valley that housed the massive, 400-foot telescope was cleared not by professionals, but by students and staff within the astronomy department (25).
A dozen volunteers assembled every weekend to cut down trees that lined the valley. The inexperienced members carried the rationale that they would “learn by doing.” Despite having access to chainsaws, the team opted to use hand axes and two-man saws to fell the timber (26).
The volunteer construction team was able to complete the site in just a few months and with relatively little trouble. One student was injured by his own hatchet while cutting firewood – on George Washington’s birthday, no less – but other than that, the project went smoothly. McVittie quipped that the group had “rediscovered the secret to building the pyramids” (26).
The VRO was first used in 1959, and while the site was used to collect some important data that allowed for further mapping of the Milky Way and study of interstellar gas, it was plagued by a series of problems almost immediately after opening (25) (27).
The inexperienced construction team built a fully operational facility, but they missed the environmental factors. The valley in which the telescope was constructed was prone to flooding by virtue of its shape. Erosion resulting from the removal of hundreds of trees was also a constant problem, so much so that the site had to be re-calibrated every summer. The re-calibration work was, of course, done using hand tools (25).
In 1967, eight years after the VRO had opened, Swenson received the funding to build a new, 120-foot steerable radio telescope at the site. Three years later, and just over a decade after it was first used, Mother Nature finally got the best of the 400-foot telescope, rendering it unusable (29).
FIG. 6:The 400-foot radio telescope at the Vermillion River site in 1961. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives.
The 120-foot telescope, having both completed its primary purpose and being severely damaged by vandalism, closed in 1981. The site was decommissioned shortly after (26). Some of the buildings, including the log cabin, still stand, and are used as natural research areas by the University (30).
Meanwhile, a proposal to widen Florida Avenue slated the south observatory for demolition in 1953 (31). It wouldn’t be torn down until 1965, by which time plans for a replacement observatory were well underway. The “Prairie Observatory,” as it was known, was built 35 miles south of campus, near Oakland (32).
The Prairie Observatory featured a 40-inch telescope and began operating in 1968 (12). The “Ross Camera,” a 4-inch Ross-Fecker telescope camera that had been in use at the University since 1938, also found a new life at the Prairie Observatory (33).
The Prairie Observatory met a similar fate as the VRO. The isolation that had shielded the site from light pollution also proved to be its downfall, and the site closed in 1981, just 13 years after opening (15).
The building remained a popular urban exploration site within Walnut Creek State Park before it was demolished in 2023 (34).
The University of Illinois isn’t the only college in Champaign County with a notable astronomical building. Parkland College is home to the William M. Staerkel Planetarium, the second largest in the state, just behind Chicago’s Adler Planetarium (35)(36).
Dr. William Staerkel, the first President of Parkland College, had proposed a planetarium to be included as a part of the college during its original construction in 1968 (35). The plans for the original planetarium never came to fruition, but when the College received funding in 1986 for a new cultural center, Staerkel’s vision was finally realized (35).
The Staerkel Planetarium opened in the fall of 1987, and the opening ceremony was held on October 22nd (35)(37). William Staerkel, despite battling illness, attended the ceremony. As a part of the festivities, a time capsule was buried at the site, which is to be re-opened in 2061 – the next time that Halley’s Comet appears (38).
The first sky shows at Staerkel used a $300,000 Carl Zeiss M1015 opto-mechanical star projector, the first of its kind to be used in the Western Hemisphere (36)(39). The planetarium now uses a modern Digistar 6 digital projector, with the Zeiss projector now seeing only occasional use (39).
The Planetarium runs public shows every weekend and contains several interactive exhibits and murals in its hallways (40). Local artist Billy Morrow Jackson painted the mural “Cosmic Blink,” which is on display at the planetarium (40).
FIG. 7: “Cosmic Blink,” a painting by local artist Billy Morrow Jackson on display in the Staerkel Planetarium lobby.
The mural, true to Jackson’s style, weaves titans of astronomy at work together in a single scene (41). “Solar Window,” a stained glass window by Arthur Stern, is another art installation at the observatory (37). The Sun’s rays bathe the lobby in multi-colored light when they pass through the pane.
There is also a collection of various meteorites in the lobby that were collected by Goose Kaler, cousin of longtime University of Illinois astronomer James B. Kaler (42) (43) (44).
The night sky as it once appeared hasn’t been driven out of the county completely. Those who still want to look up and see what the Myaamia saw centuries ago can get pretty close at the Middle Fork River Forest Preserve (45).
FIG. 8: The Northern Lights visible at Middle Fork River Forest Preserve on the night of October 10th, 2024
The Preserve, which is operated by the Champaign County Forest Preserve District, is located at the extreme northeast corner of the county, roughly five and a half miles north of Penfield, very near where Champaign County meets Ford and Vermillion Counties (46).
Middle Fork was designated an International Dark Sky Park in 2018, and it remains the only place in the state to receive such a designation (47). The Preserve is a prime location to view the northern lights during the current period of maximum solar activity (48)(49).
Even if the northern lights aren’t dancing above, the skies at Middle Fork serve as a reminder of what was once, and still is, above Champaign County.
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