Its days doing scientific research might be decades behind it, but the Clark telescope at Dartmouth College’s Shattuck Observatory still has one big advantage: It looks *exactly* the way a telescope should.
“Kids really love it because it is what they imaged. You’ve seen a cartoon of an astronomer looking through a huge telescope, and it matches perfectly. Modern telescopes don’t have the same presence,” said Marie Calapa, instructional lab manager for the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
The Clark refracting telescope with its 12-foot-long tube and 9.4-inch-wide main lens stands on a big stand chockablock with wheels and cogs to shift it around and covered with a finderscope, counterweights, and other serious-looking attachments. There’s a big observatory dorm overhead and desks with sciency-looking stuff.
But it is still human-sized: You can walk up and peer through the eyepiece just like you’ve seen scientists do in movies and get a view of the surface of the moon or the rings of Saturn enlarged some 60 times.
“They don’t build observatories like this anymore,” she added. Modern research telescopes are massive things located far from city lights and you don’t peer through eyepieces; you look at computer screens giving out data collected digitally by the scope — assuming it’s not blocked by the increasing number of satellites in the sky.
However, you can’t experience the Clark telescope for the next year and a half or so because it has been taken apart and shipped to Waltham, Mass., where a father-and-son team known as Boston Science LLC will clean it up, repair accumulated damage from 150 years of use, and rebuild it as necessary. The central tube was hoisted out of the observatory on Friday morning to accompany hundreds, maybe thousands, of other pieces to the shop.
The work is long overdue, Calapa said. “It hasn’t really had a full refurbishment down to the brass screws ever. It has gotten difficult to even move the telescope anymore.”
As part of the project, which has a six-figure budget, the Shattuck Observatory itself will get upgrades from paint to heating and air conditioning to new floors. “The idea is to bring it back to its historical look,” Calapa said. The observatory has long been used for public events but an upgrade will expand the scope and number, letting more people get a look at a cutting-edge scientific instrument built soon after the Civil War.
The Shattuck Observatory, named after a rich guy who paid for it (some things haven’t changed), was largely the brainchild of a physics professor named Ira Young and was Dartmouth’s first major investment in scientific research.
It was sufficiently important that Dartmouth started advertising the observatory to prospective students, and other science professors followed Young’s lead and asked for research equipment of their own, says a Dartmouth News article. The article includes this lovely tidbit: “In the 1880s, students lived there rent-free in exchange for maintaining the instruments and taking daily weather measurements.” A possible solution to the Hanover housing crunch?
Having outlived its scientific usefulness, the observatory has had some close scrapes as Dartmouth balanced historic charm with contemporary needs. Its history of hosting public events and creating fans saved it: When it was under threat of demolition in 2017, more than 2,000 people across the Upper Valley and around the world signed a petition to stop the new construction.
Among the fans is astronomer Doug Arion, class of 1979, who found inspiration at Shattuck as a student that led him to a career as a professor of physics and astronomy at Carthage College. Arion is funding the refurbishment of the telescope and dome.
Once it’s spiffed up, expect to see the Shattuck Observatory used a lot more. “It’s been a little bit difficult to show it to the public recently due to the decay,” Calapa said. Aside from tours that can get people excited about astronomy and science in general, it should be suitable for gatherings and events. “They could film an independent short in there, or have a music presentation in that space,” Calapa mused.
But more importantly, it will again be a working observatory that looks like an old-time movie set but can bring to you the wonder of the cosmos.
“You’ve seen pictures (of astronomical bodies) but it’s so different when you’re looking through the lens at something,” Calapa said. “There’s no comparison.”
The Clark telescope through a door at the observatory, Oct. 23, 2026. SOPHIA SAHNI / For the Monitor
