Lanphier Observatory celebrates 50 years
Leelanau School landmark ignites wonder, inspires students
Photo: Recent Leelanau School graduate Chloe Sunderman will assist with constellation tours at the Observatory during Wednesday and Thursday nights this summer.
By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
This summer marks the 50th summer of stargazing at The Leelanau School’s Lanphier Observatory. Open to the public on Wednesday and Thursday nights from June 24 to Aug. 20, from dusk to midnight (clear skies permitting, $5 for adults and $4 for students), this gift from Charles “Chick” Lanphier five decades ago has inspired and astonished thousands of summer guests and generations of high school students as they viewed the heavens through the powerful 14-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegranian reflecting telescope and learned the constellations twinkling over Sleeping Bear Bay.
Since the Lanphier Observatory was built during the bicentennial year of 1976, visitors to the Glen Lake area and the Leelanau School have oohed and aahed at the wonders of the universe they can see through the telescope.
The observatory was a gift from Lanphier, an electrical engineer from Springfield, Ill., who summered on Glen Lake for most of his life. An avid astronomer as well as an inventor (he helped develop the electrical meter that’s now on everybody’s house), “Chick” Lanphier’s dream was to have a state-of-the-art observatory on Prospect Hill overlooking the Glen Lakes so that he could share his stargazing passion with everyone. With meticulous care Lanphier designed the facility, machined many of the parts himself, and even helped the Ash Dome Company develop the special “Lanphier shutter” that allows winter viewing through a special window so that stargazers in the dome don’t freeze.
In 1976, the observatory opened when director Dave Waltrip showed students from Glen Lake and Suttons Bay high schools the “first light” through the big 14-inch Celestron reflecting telescope. The following summer of 1977, up to 90 people per clear night lined the lane from the Homestead Reception Center up to the Observatory, which offered stunning views over Big Glen Lake and Sleeping Bear Bay to guests on the deck waiting their turn to climb the ladder to the big scope. A Leelanau Amateur Astronomy Study Group soon formed under the leadership of Bob Moler, (the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society’s astronomy guru, whose daily Ephemeris program can be heard on Interlochen Public Radio, 91.5 FM. The Astronomical Society hosts “Star Parties” at the Dune Climb in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Check the Park website for dates and times).
Mr. Lanphier continued to pay frequent visits to Bill Maclachlan down at Old School Hardware (the old school house in the middle of Glen Arbor has since become two short-term rental apartments) as he tinkered with the darkroom, the shutter, or the dome, perfecting every detail of what his family down on the lake simply called “The O.” Lanphier passed away in 1978, just two years after the Observatory opened, but his legacy includes this amazing gift to the community that has made it possible for thousands of people to see astonishing views of planets, comets, nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies.
At the age of 15 years, the Observatory had to move. The Leelanau School swapped the wooded hill where the Observatory stood with the Homestead Resort for the Cora Beals house down on the beach. The hill is now the site of the Homestead’s Stonybrook Lodge, and the Cora Beals house has moved onto the Leelanau School campus to become the Cora Beals Arts Center. (Cora and “Skipper” Beals founded the Leelanau School for Boys and the Pinebrook School for Girls with Helen and Arthur Huey in 1929.)
The demolition of the original observatory was pictured on the front page of the Traverse City Record-Eagle on Feb. 15, 1990. The telescopes, the doors, windows, and lights, the darkroom equipment, even the blackboard and chalk were stored, and the dome squatted on the ground next to the Crystal River on the path to the Leelanau School waterfront for one summer while a new, smaller observatory was built down on the beach.
We ran an electrical cord down to the beach and set up a platform for portable telescopes so that our twice-a-week public viewing nights could continue uninterrupted, and in 1991 the telescope was mounted on the new pier in the center of the building and the dome was dropped onto the new Lanphier Observatory on the shore of Sleeping Bear Bay.
Gone was the view of Big Glen and the perfect southern horizon for seeing summer splendors in the constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius. But the new location, with its perfect horizon from the Sleeping Bear Dunes to the southwest all the way round to Pyramid Point to the north, allows for daily use as a classroom for all Leelanau School science students, and it has become a place to watch seasonal bird migrations, bald eagles hunting ducks along the edge of the ice all winter, the ships and fishing boats that ply the waters of the Manitou Passage, and of course the moon, planets, comets, stars, auroras, and deep sky objects of the night sky.
When he presented the Observatory to the Leelanau School, Mr. Lanphier only required that the school continue to provide public viewing nights and instruction in astronomy for all. Thanks to Lanphier, hundreds of visitors continue to shuffle down to the “dome on the beach” between dusk and midnight on Wednesday and Thursday nights from the summer solstice through late August, provided the clouds stay away (admission is $5 for adults and $4 for students).
Along with the changing phases of the moon, numerous man-made satellites, ISS (the International Space Station), frequent meteors, and rare northern lights, visitors on summer nights can expect to see the binary star Albireo, the Ring nebula, the great globular star cluster in Hercules, on perfect nights the Whirlpool Galaxy, and later in the summer the great Andromeda Galaxy. This summer bright Venus and Jupiter sparkle in the western sky as they drop toward the horizon out over Lake Michigan. These planets, along with the changing phases of the moon, are ripe for viewing through the big telescope.
A series of signs replicating the sun and planets leads visitors through the campus to the Observatory on the beach. Look for the circular planets marked with arrows to show you the meandering way through the campus, across the Crystal River, and past the Beach Bards Bonfire.
This summer a recent Leelanau School grad, Chloe Sunderman, will share with visitors the constellations and their stories on the deck while Dr. Elizabeth Wolterink aims the big telescope at the moon, the planets (including Jupiter and its four big moons), and the wonders of deep space.
Sunderman, who plans to study astrophysics at Mount Holyoke this fall, is among many students for whom the Observatory has ignited wonder and inspiration. Sunderman came to Leelanau already curious about astronomy, but credits the Observatory with fueling that interest into a passion.
“I think that was really a pivotal moment for me,” she said, describing the first time she looked through the dome’s telescope.
Sunderman came from Saginaw, where she took an early high school astronomy class, but describes the light pollution there as pretty bad. Here at the Lanphier Observatory, she said, “Learning about these things, and then actually being able to see them was super cool […] Seeing something from your actual perspective is a lot more emotional. The fact that you’re seeing stars in real time […] is really important to me, and being able to recognize that this is our place in the universe, instead of viewing it secondhand.”
Her favorite sight through the telescope is Jupiter and its moons. Part of Sunderman’s interest in Astronomy is also passing that emotion onto others. “[I] want to be able to help out here over the summer and be able to take on this career, so being able to meet all these different people and being able to teach them a couple things about the sky is really cool to me.”
Sunderman will assist with constellation tours at the Observatory this summer before heading off to college. You can come and experience her passion for the stars first hand on Wednesday and Thursday nights, June 24 through Aug. 20, starting at dusk.
