U of T’s 71-year-old David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill has hosted a long line of Canada’s most renowned astronomers. But if the university gets its way, the few remaining astronomers using the observatory’s 1.88-metre telescope will likely be the last.
The DDO’s blue-framed telescope, the largest in Canada by two inches, was once the tool of choice for most of the astronomers working late nights under the observatory’s white dome. Among other distinctions, DDO was where researcher Tom Bolton spotted the first evidence of black holes, in 1971. When it was first built, astronomers there studied the universe through images printed on photographic plates. Now, even with advanced CCD detectors-similar to those used in digital cameras-their successors struggle to interpret data washed out by the lights of Richmond Hill.
Light pollution is not the only problem looming over the land-locked observatory, which, despite being surrounded by 189 acres of its own green space, is just a speck in a sea of suburban rooftops.
Court documents filed by U of T’s Governing Council in 2003 show that the university may be considering selling off the observatory and the land it sits on, stating that the “ability of the [DDO] to function as a world-class observatory has been substantially hindered by … light pollution and changes in the practice of astronomy and astrophysics.”
Since the land around the DDO-containing forested areas and a herd of deer, according to Richmond Hill officials-was part of a donation, U of T must win an appeal to lift restrictions placed on the use of the land before being able to sell it. According to covenants placed on the donation, if U of T were to use the land for purposes other than “an observatory and park,” it would revert back to the heirs of the original benefactor, Jessie Donalda Dunlap.
To honour her late husband, Jessie Dunlap, who has at least three living heirs, donated the land for the construction of the observatory and its administration building to the U of T in 1935.
Since those early years, Richmond Hill has grown into a development-hungry metropolis where each acre of the 189 belonging to the DDO has the potential to be worth anywhere from $400,000 to $600,000, for a total of around $75.6 million to $113 million.
The Governing Council is claiming that the goals of the original donation will be best furthered by funding new projects in astronomy, “by disposing of the lands … and using the proceeds.”
But many astronomy lovers feel the closure of the DDO would be another blow to enthusiasts still lamenting the mothballing of the former McLaughlin Planetarium in 1995.
“I would say that would be very bad, because then education-wise, people wouldn’t be able to come here,” said Tuba Koktay, the public education and outreach coordinator at the DDO, who began at the observatory as an astronomer.
As part of her role at the DDO, Koktay organizes and presents lectures to some of the almost 3,000 people who visit the site annually, ranging from scouts earning their astronomy badge to members of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, who set up their own telescopes on the grounds for public use.
Lynn Foster, a Richmond Hill city councillor, highlights the role in the community of the observatory grounds themselves.
“If I can be so cavalier, it’s almost like being in Muskoka, but you’re right in the middle of Richmond Hill,” said Foster, the newly re-elected councillor for Toronto’s Ward 4, describing the DDO’s vast property of forests and grassland. “There’s a whole natural area that’s been created there and now … we’ve got this microcosm of Central Ontario wildlife and all the appropriate flora and fauna.”
Foster, whose little brother used to cut grass for one of the astronomers, also talked about how the 25 deer, arboretum, and zodiac garden on the property all contribute to the ambience of the grounds, which are open for the community to use as a park.
“Those kinds of connections are really important for people, for their health, not only their physical health … but also mental health as well,” Foster said.
When the Richmond Hill city council convenes in January, Foster and the Heritage Richmond Hill committee, which she chairs, will go to council to recommend the site receive a special heritage designation that would protect it from development, but not before trying, for the second time, to convince U of T to send a representative to discuss the matter.
“There are many issues here, and I have every hope and belief that they will be resolved in a very positive manner. We just, at this point, have to get everybody to the table,” Foster said.
And though members U of T’s Governing Council, including President Naylor, were not available for comment, Peter Martin, the chair of the astronomy and astrophysics department, offered reasons the university might consider selling the observatory.
“It’s a matter of priority … given the huge range of opportunities [in astronomy], where would a person spend their research effort?” asked Martin.
“Things happen amazingly fast with technology that one can’t even imagine what we’ll be doing 70 years from now,” he said.
Though technology has helped the 1.88-metre telescope at the DDO become several times more efficient-it now uses CCD sensors instead of photographic plates-light pollution still hinders the operation of the observatory, according to Martin.
Among its other problems, the sheer light-gathering power of Canada’s largest telescope is much less than that of larger optical telescopes located in places with more accommodating weather.
At telescopes located in Hawaii and Chile, “you don’t waste as much time waiting for a little hole in the clouds. With DDO, you have to be there to know whether it’s clear or not,” Martin said.
The scope of astronomy today is also no longer limited to using mere visible light. It now includes infrared, radio, and x-ray observation.
“It’s not marginalized in the sense that its capability has gone down … but it’s now a part of a much bigger range of activity,” Martin said.
When optical astronomy was still in its prime, the discoveries made at the DDO were among some of the most important in the field.
Three decades ago, Professor Tom Bolton pointed the observatory’s main telescope at the coordinates of an x-ray source, and noticed, in spectrograph readings, an object “too large” to be a star. Bolton’s discovery of the black hole Cygnus X-1 has followed his name throughout his career.
Disagreeing with his colleagues, Bolton said the fate of DDO shouldn’t be sealed yet, since it’s still used for valuable research.
“We still are a very productive observatory, with significant impact in the areas in which we do research, but there’s so few of us doing it now that we don’t have the breadth of reach in various fields as we used to have,” Bolton said.
Upgrading the observatory’s hardware would go a long way in improving the observatory’s performance, according to Bolton. Planet-hunting, catching up with Harvard University’s 1.5-metre telescope, and acquiring higher resolution readings of the stars are all possible with better instrumentation.
“There are a lot of things we could do, some of them small, some of them more expensive and very significant, but in total they would improve the performance of the telescope and make a greater variety of research possible,” said Bolton. “This could be a productive observatory for as far into the future as I can imagine. But the kind of research that we do here is going to disappear if it’s closed up, because you can’t do it on the big telescopes.”
Martin cautions that the idea of U of T selling the DDO is still not definite.
Indeed, according to the lawyer representing U of T on this case, the application “has not gone forward at this point in time because the parties are in discussion about how to resolve the issue.”
The lawyer for one of Jessie Dunlap’s heirs declined requests for an interview, saying that it is “too sensitive of a matter to deal with through the media.”
Bolton’s worst-case scenario, and one he says is very likely, is that when he and another astronomer at the site retire within the next year, the observatory’s future would be even more uncertain.
“If it’s closed and there’s a long period when it’s in limbo, without maintenance of the buildings, and without continuity of the staff … and there was deterioration of the building and equipment … then I think it would be nearly impossible to reopen to observatory.”
