In roughly 150 BCE - over a thousand years before the invention of the telescope - Greek astronomer Hipparchus constructed what is thought to be the first astronomical observatory in recorded history. Here, through carefully conducted naked-eye observations, Hipparchus discovered the precession of Earth’s axis. It is also at this observatory where Hipparchus devised a system to categorize stars based on their apparent brightness. Today, his brightness scale serves as the foundation for our modern stellar magnitude system.

        Similar to how the printing press revolutionized the preindustrial world, the invention of the telescope brought about a new age for astronomers. Invented in 1609, this new creation allowed us to see things we had never seen before, such as Saturn’s rings and the Jovian moons. Today, observatories across the world can do much more than their predecessors. For one, modern-day observatories are generally capable of tracking objects as they move across the sky. Additionally, rather than only observing in the visible spectrum of light, observatories today have been tuned to all frequencies of light, from radio waves to gamma rays. The quest for new observations across the electromagnetic spectrum has facilitated the creation of increasingly large telescopes, such as the (sadly decommissioned) Arecibo observatory, which observed light in the radio wavelengths by using a reflector dish with a diameter of a thousand feet.

            During the construction of the physics building in 1959, the University of Georgia was fortunate enough to acquire its own observatory. The telescope boasted a 24-inch-wide primary mirror, which captured views of faint asteroids and moons with ease. Dr. Loris Magnani, former professor and researcher at the University of Georgia, recounts his experiences with UGA’s observatory fondly. “When it was working, it was awesome,” he explains. “It was really easy to use, and it worked really well.” 

Compared to the telescopes the department currently relies on for outreach and labs, the observatory blows its competition out of the water. With a mirror almost two and a half times larger than the ten-inch telescopes used in introductory astronomy labs, its light-gathering ability was nearly 6 times that of the competition. This meant that while the ten-inch telescopes struggled to observe objects like moons of outer planets, the observatory was able to find many more moons and make out details that differentiated them. When I used the department’s ten-inch telescopes, I could see the four Galilean moons (Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa) as well as Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Through these small telescopes, however, the Galilean moons and Titan all look like simple points of light. In contrast, Dr. Magnani recalls being able to observe brightness differences between the Galilean moons using the telescope in the observatory. He also remembers being able to observe five of Saturn’s moons, three of Uranus’s moons, and Neptune’s largest moon, Triton. To put this in perspective, the Galilean moons all have magnitudes ranging from 4.6 to 5.6, while Neptune’s moon Triton has a magnitude of 13.5. That makes Triton nearly twenty times fainter than the Galilean satellites. 

As impressive as the telescope was, it was not without its faults. Firstly, it was built on the roof of the physics building, meaning it was located less than 500 feet from Sanford Stadium. The combined light pollution from the stadium lights and downtown Athens thus made for poor viewing conditions, as the sky glow washed out many of the faintest night sky objects. Consequently, while the observatory could image objects down to the 14th and 15th magnitudes, it may have been able to image down to 17th and 18th magnitudes had it been built in a more optimal location. Further, the physics building was originally constructed with a tar roof. Though the tar has since been covered by plastic, it still absorbs heat during the day and radiates it at night. This heat creates unwanted air movement in the telescope’s field of view, which negatively impacts its ability to resolve objects. With these setbacks in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that the UGA observatory was not particularly well-suited for astronomical research. However, it served as an important educational tool for students in the university’s astrophysics program.

Unfortunately, the observatory has been down for repairs for over five years. Dr. Magnani, who worked extensively with the telescope during his time at UGA, clarifies what went wrong. According to him, an important piece of hardware caught fire back in 2019. This piece was responsible for communicating with the analog components of the telescope and converting the information from these components into digital readout. Although the piece was replaced after the accident, the new software and hardware eventually stopped communicating with the telescope properly. Now, the telescope consistently shuts down after only a few minutes of operation “...for reasons that involve some kind of bugs in the new software,” as Dr. Magnani puts it. 

When it worked, this observatory rivaled every other telescope of similar caliber in the state. With a functional telescope, the university could seriously expand the astronomy community in Athens and the surrounding area. Other observatories across the state (such as the Tellus Observatory in Cartersville, GA, and the North Georgia Astronomical Observatory in Dahlonega, GA) host regular community outreach nights where members of the public can visit and admire the heavens. 

Additionally, a working observatory on the UGA campus will mean that all astrophysics majors will have access to a telescope more suited to their academic needs. When it was operational, this telescope played a pivotal role in teaching students about the movement of objects in the sky, Dr. Magnani explains. He remarks, “This is how you learn the sky.” He also brings to light the contradiction in UGA being a research 1 institution, yet lacking a telescope of this caliber. “It’s like being an SEC school and you have a crappy practice football field,” he clarifies. All other universities comparable to UGA in the research space have an observatory of similar caliber, while UGA falls short in that respect.