This summer, the Leelanau School’s Lanphier Observatory is open to the public for stargazing, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
It takes place every Wednesday and Thursday starting through Aug. 22 as long as weather is permissible. Stargazing will be from 10 p.m. to midnight on these nights and admission is $5 for adults and $4 for students.
Norm Wheeler, Faculty Emeritus and former Astronomy teacher at the Leelanau School, is coordinating the program this summer.
“We’ll make sure there are people there to teach constellations and watch for the international space station to go over,” Wheeler stated, “Dr. Elizabeth Wolterink is taking over the reins,” as he retired from the school, although will still be present to help and educate at some of the nights. “We always look at things like the ring nebula and multiple star systems.” Patrons can expect to see constellations, potentially planets and northern lights, and the international space station as it makes its way overhead.
The observatory was a gift from Charles Lanphier, and he designed the 14-inch lens himself, even manufacturing some of the parts.
Lanphier was an avid inventor and astronomer from Illinois. The observatory featured a new technology Lanphier helped to develop, the Lanphier shutter, allowing star gazers to view while being protected from the elements. The observatory was originally on the Homestead hill, where you had a beautiful view of Lake Michigan and perfect stargazing conditions. When that section of the hill was sold to the Homestead just 15 years after the observatory opened, the observatory was moved to the beach, where it still has an unobstructed view of the skies.
“When he donated it to the school, he requested that it be open to the public every summer,” said Wheeler. It has been open to the public, “two nights a week ever since, in the summer on clear nights,” Wheeler said. Lanphier sadly passed away just two years after the opening of the observatory, in 1978. Lanphier’s legacy lives on in the annual summers full of stargazing, available to the public, as he requested.
The Lanphier Observatory is walkable from the visitor parking lot in the Leelanau School’s campus. If you follow the planet signs throughout the campus, you’ll find the beach, said Wheeler. At night, “a little lighted path after the Crystal River bridge,” will show the way to the beach, Wheeler said. It is very easy to find the observatory, even at night. This summer, the tradition will continue, the observatory will be open to the public, and those who go will walk away with an experience to remember.
