Out of the darkness, Lake Afton Observatory ready to gaze skyward

The Earth has circled the sun once since the Lake Afton Observatory last let the public gaze toward the cosmos.

But a Wichita astronomy club is turning the lights back on this Labor Day weekend.

The Kansas Astronomical Observers will open the observatory to the public on Sept. 2. The group has been working to take control of the facility in western Sedgwick County since it closed a year ago. The county leased the property to the group last month.

Wichita State University, which had operated the facility, cited declining attendance and the costs of running the observatory when it was shut down.

But Fred Gassert, the astronomy group’s president, hopes it will once again become a destination for both seasoned astronomers and interested novices. Visitors to the observatory can use the 16-inch telescope, study exhibits, use smaller telescopes outside and listen to presentations about astronomy.

“It’s amazing how many people start the hobby by coming to a facility like this,” Gassert said.

Admission will be $8 for ages 13 and up, $4 for ages 5 to 12 and free for children younger than 5.

The group has received positive feedback so far. Gassert said around 100 people came out to the grounds of the observatory on two separate nights to catch the Perseids, a strong meteor shower that peaked earlier this month.

“We picked up some volunteers from there. We were really pleased with the response from the public,” Gassert said. “Now is that going to translate directly to people showing up here next weekend? We hope so.”

‘Make the facility unique’

A trip to Lake Afton Observatory takes you about 20 miles southwest of downtown Wichita. It’s just north of Lake Afton Park.

Observatory director Harold Henderson said the building was originally conceived as an off-site classroom for Wichita State students taking astronomy classes. It gradually became a public attraction on weekends to help offset some of its costs.

Henderson said the observatory lost some of its value to WSU as astronomy labs were increasingly completed on campus.

“When you’re doing an astronomy lab course, you’re measuring colors, you’re measuring distances, you’re measuring quantifiable things,” Henderson said. “You’re not necessarily sitting at the eyepiece with a sketchpad trying to accurately recreate what you’re seeing.”

Gassert said the astronomy club used to meet at the observatory before it closed. Club members would help people figure out how to use their telescopes.

“We’ve always been out here during the summer time,” Gassert said. “This has always been considered our base observatory.”

They’ll probably need five or six volunteers each night to staff the observatory. They’re still looking for people to volunteer time, money or equipment that could help the observatory.

The group has worked to update exhibits in the final weeks before the grand opening.

Gassert said the facility will feature computer displays, virtual head sets and astronomy-based games. They’ve received some donations and are looking for more.

“Those things will make the facility unique every time you come out, as opposed to seeing the same thing over and over again,” he said.

‘The potential is there’

The club hopes to revive interest in the observatory in education circles by using connections with schools and science departments.

“We’re sending emails and fliers directly to those people to spread the word that way,” Gassert said. “We’re inviting the teachers to bring the kids out here during the week and do activities.”

Fred Snyder, a seventh-grade science teacher at Wilbur Middle School near Central and Tyler, said the school has taken field trips to the observatory in the past. And he said the astronomers’ club visited the school and set up telescopes to observe sunspots last spring.

“Our curriculum is more hands-on instead of theory,” Snyder said. “Having that resource between the observatory and the astronomy club is really important. Because we don’t have the equipment.”

“I’m just glad to see the baton is being picked up by somebody else up,” Snyder added

Activities at the schools make it more convenient for teachers, Henderson said.

“Once we open, that gives us another opportunity to advertise to high school teachers, middle school teachers: ‘Hey, we’re open again. Ask us about some of the things we can do at your facility,’” Henderson said.

It’s not like those teachers and classes can go anywhere else very close to look at the stars.

“If you got on to Google and started looking for observatories in Kansas, there are darn few,” Henderson said.

Sure, there’s Farpoint Observatory near Topeka. Another astronomers’ group runs the “Warko” Observatory on the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus and the Powell Observatory near Louisburg. And Pittsburg State operates Greenbush Astrophysical Observatory near its campus in southeastern Kansas.

“(But) from Wichita west, there’s nothing,” Henderson said.

News of the observatory’s closing because of low attendance dramatically boosted its attendance last summer.

“It brought to the forefront of people’s minds that this is even here,” Gassert said. “That was when we were getting the most ‘There’s an observatory out there? What is it? What do you do there?’”

Gassert said the observatory saw up to 300 people on some nights between WSU’s announcement and the observatory’s final night on Aug. 22, 2015. That compared to only hosting 40 people a night if “they were lucky.”

“On well-attended nights, there was never enough room. It’s like they needed to close more often,” Gassert joked.

“We know once we open back up, we don’t think we’re going to come close to those numbers,” he said. “We know the potential is there because it’s happened before.”

Open Fridays, Saturdays

The observatory’s first public night is Friday, Sept. 2. It also will host public programs Saturday and Sunday during its first weekend.

The first couple of weekends will focus on Saturn while that planet is still high enough in the sky to point the observatory’s 16-inch telescope toward it, Henderson said. They’ll show visitors facts about Saturn and how to find it in the night sky.

“Saturn is very unique, identifiable,” Henderson said. “You’ll know it when you see it”

The observatory will normally be open Friday and Saturday evenings. Its hours will vary depending on when the sun sets. From May to August, it will open at 9 p.m. But from October to February, it will open earlier, at 7:30 p.m.

The observatory will still host presentations indoors on rainy or cloudy evenings. But severe weather with high winds and lightning will close the facility, Gassert said.

“This isn’t a building you want to be in when the weather gets bad,” he said. “It’s a lightning magnet with the dome.”

‘Sparks an interest’

Gassert and Henderson know they are going up against headwinds.

The advance of laptop and smartphone technology means you can have beautiful images of the cosmos from the Hubble Space Telescope or elsewhere at your fingertips in seconds.

Such advances in space science played a role in the observatory’s decline over the years.

But Gassert said there’s something special about knowing you’re seeing stars or galaxies as their light first reaches Earth.

“You’re seeing this is what’s up there. … It kind of sparks an interest,” Gassert said. “They’ll come two or three times and the next thing you know: ‘Hey, I bought a telescope.’”

The light you see through a telescope’s eyepiece is not the same light a friend may see a few minutes later, Henderson said.

“It’s very unique. It’s very personal,” he said. “Those are photons for you and you only.”

“They may have traveled minutes. They may have traveled years. They may have traveled millions of years, depending on the object that we’re looking at,” he said. “But it’s a very unique thing when you get to think where all this light is coming from and how long it’s traveled.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2016 at 4:14 PM with the headline "Out of the darkness, Lake Afton Observatory ready to gaze skyward."