Our planet is dotted with old observatories and astronomical research centers that are no longer capable of doing science. Either their equipment is too small, their skies too bright, or both. Both is always an option. I’ve been lucky enough to get to visit Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, Pulkovo Observatory outside of Leningrad, and Lowell Observatory in Arizona with its old domes and new standing side-by-side. Each of these facilities, combines amazing architecture and attention to detail that just isn’t seen in today’s more utilitarian facilities. As much as I love all these places, however, there is one facility that is near and dear to my heart, that I’ve never had a chance to set foot in. That observatory is the Dominion Astronomical Observatory in Ottawa. While working on my undergraduate senior project, I poured over old circulars from the observatory that contained information on variable stars in what felt like countless globular clusters. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent typing all of this into spreadsheets while trying to tease out the rate of evolution of RR Lyrae stars. I went through a lot of journals from all sorts of different sources finding data, and it was the data from that Canadian facility that always seemed to be exactly what I was looking for.
When I learned earlier this week that this facility is being designated a national historical site in Canada, it made me irrationally happy. The Dominion Observatory is a celebration of how science can be core to a nation’s advancement. From the facility’s citation:
Constructed between 1902 and 1954, the Dominion Observatory Complex is located within another national historic site, Ottawa’s Central Experimental Farm, on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. It is a complex of distinctive buildings whose architecture conveys the federal government’s forward-looking vision, at the turn of the century, to establish national scientific institutions in the capital. From 1905 to 1970, the Dominion Observatory Complex served as a major centre for Canadian scientific research in the field of practical astronomy and its application in the areas of surveying, time service, and geophysics. The complex also served as a site for outreach and education as researchers shared their passion for astronomy with the public through meetings of the Royal Astronomical Society, public lectures, guided tours, and Saturday evening stargazing events. Throughout its history, the research and experiments undertaken at the Dominion Observatory Complex were influential in the advancement of Canadian scientific excellence.
Here’s to hoping that more of the world’s elder astronomy facilities find their way into the protected buildings lists.
Protecting human heritage on the Moon
While Canada is busy protecting new sites of past science here on Earth, the World Monuments Fund is calling for the protection of more than 90 locations on the moon where humans and our robotic science collaborators have explored. This call for protection is especially timely as more and more nations and companies are looking to reach the surface of the Moon. It only takes one overly aggressive rover, or one crashed lander to destroy the footprints of early astronauts and smash the instruments they left behind. There have been discussions of creating UN World Heritage sites on the moon, and I, for one, hope we’ll see that before human tourists become a lunar concern.
Protecting human heritage on Mars
The Moon isn’t the only world anthropologists are worried about protecting.
A new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, led by Justin Holcomb, reminds us that “Humans first reached Mars in 1971, initiating the record of human activity on the Red Planet. As planetary scientists plan for future planetary protection procedures for Mars, they should also consider the developing archaeological record on one of our nearest planets.”
The paper argues that the rovers and other technologies that humans have scattered on the red planet represent humanity’s first attempts to move beyond the planet Earth and make humans a multi-planetary species. According to Holcomb, “Our main argument is that Homo sapiens are currently undergoing a dispersal, which first started out of Africa, reached other continents, and has now begun in off-world environments.”
We live at a transition point in history where we are gearing up to literally go where no human has gone before. This isn’t Columbus finding America. It is the first Polynesian sailors and early humans crossing the Bering Sea on an ice bridge and finding a new world.
I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m glad to see so many people calling for the protection of all those robots who are paving the way for humanity.