December 2022 – Letting the light in
Exterior and interior views of the newly installed Twin Dome window
Two days before Christmas 2022 School of Physics and Astronomy technician Chris Watson managed to astound me and Observatory Director Aleks Scholz by almost secretly completing the installation of a new window for the dome – its one and only window. This had been a vague plan that the three of us had talked about for a while in the manner of “wouldn’t it be great if…” and suddenly, there it was. For more than 40 years the structure of the dome had done its job of keeping the light out of the space (with the obvious exception of starlight after dark) and in one winter’s evening all of that was changed and a large curved window – created by removing and glazing sections of the powered shutter – now flooded the interior with light for the first time.
The dome hadn’t been able to rotate for a long time (the mechanism was rusted and perished) and when it was last used it was parked with the shutter in an east-west alignment. Therefore, using shutter sections as a framing for the window meant choosing either east or west for the window. On balance it was felt that light from the rising sun seemed a better option so that is the direction it now faces. Maybe one day the roof will turn again.