Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103150375
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEVE KARK CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: PEMBROKE LENGTH: Medium
They like it best, they say, on the darkest nights - and the darker the better. The reason: It's better to see the stars by.
Dennison and his students have been installing a telescope in the new Flossie Martin Astronomical Observatory near Mountain Lake, away from the lights of Blacksburg and the Tech campus.
Because the nights are so clear and dark in rural Giles County, Dennison figures it may be possible to see stars that are several billion miles away.
Located on the grounds of the Miles Horton Research Center, the observatory was built largely through funding by the Horton Foundation. It joins an art studio, a biological research lab and an air-pollution research facility already at the site.
A long wooden stairway climbs the mountainside from the parking area behind the studio. It is illuminated at night and makes an impressive sight stretching up the mountain in the darkness.
At the end of the stairway is a small building that will house the observatory's library and darkroom. The building also likely will be used as a place to warm up. The observatory is not heated because rising heat waves would distort the view through the telescope.
The building housing the telescope has been named in honor of Flossie Martin, a tribute by Horton to a 100-year-old retired librarian and biology teacher who profoundly influenced his life.
It is capped with an aluminum dome that can be rotated to face any part of the sky. This silver-colored dome is visible for miles and can easily be spotted from U.S. 460 east of Pembroke by looking toward Salt Pond Mountain.
The telescope has been named after Armando Mancini, an astronomer from Fairfax who donated it to the new facility.
Five feet in length, it uses a design in which light from an object is reflected by a 12-inch mirror to a smaller mirror above, then passes back through a hole in the center of the main mirror where it can be viewed through the telescope's eyepiece.
The advantage of this kind of telescope is that it collects more light and offers greater detail, Dennison said.
The Mancini telescope, he said, was one of 15 or so commissioned by the U.S. Army in 1950 to study the moon's orbit in anticipation of lunar exploration. They were built by the Japanese and designed to be moved by truck.
The precise location of the moon in its orbit was determined with these telescopes by applying the principles of triangulation, a method known to surveyors.
The data collected during the project were programmed into NASA's computers and were crucial to the successful Apollo flights between 1968 and 1972.
Some modifications were done on the telescope, Dennison said, before it was installed on the mountainside.
Since the objects in the night sky appear to move from east to west, he said, telescopes of this size commonly use some sort of drive to keep them aimed at the object being viewed. Because this telescope was designed to be movable, the drive mechanism was gravity driven.
Now, however, the telescope is firmly anchored to the bedrock beneath the observatory, so technicians from Tech have installed an electric drive.
Smaller telescopes also have been added to the frame. These will be used to align the larger telescope with the object being viewed. The telescope is also being fitted for a computer-driven electronic camera.
From many stars in deep space, too little starlight reaches the Earth for viewing with the naked eye. The camera will enable Dennison and his students to see them by collecting this light using time-lapse photography.
When the installation of the telescope has been completed, it will be used to give students from Tech and Radford University "hands on" instruction, Dennison said.
Although much of the advanced astronomical research is performed on the big radio dishes such as those in nearby Green Bank, W.Va., this telescope is useful for teaching the basics of astronomical observation, he said.
Tech has another observatory closer to the campus, but, Dennison said, its usefulness for viewing deep-space objects has been limited by the light pollution from a nearby shopping plaza and golf driving range.
An official opening ceremony for the new observatory is planned for May, although it will not be open to the public. The observatory near campus is sometimes open to the public.
by CNB