With the telescope it was built for returned, Park Interpreter Martin Bradley recently employed the same sophisticated equipment they used 100 years ago to open the ceiling of the Ukiah Latitude Observatory.

“I can tell by the grooves here they used a broom, too,” said Bradley, indeed using a broom handle Tuesday to push the two, rolling sections of the small building’s roof open to reveal the afternoon sky.

What wasn’t used 100 years ago, of course, is the smoke detector now perched in the ceiling, a modern touch Bradley said needed to be installed before the 1899 Wanschaff zenith could be taken out of storage on the East Coast and delivered back to Ukiah.

One of six built to “observe the wobble of the Earth on its axis,” the 116-year-old telescope was used to collect data in Ukiah, while its fellow telescopes were set up in Maryland, Ohio, Japan, Uzbekistan and Italy. All in the Northern Hemisphere “along the parallel 39:08 north latitude,” the alignment of the observatories meant they could “perform uniform data analysis.” Each day at a set time, staff at the observatories would train their telescopes on the same star and carefully note its precise location in the sky.

Unfortunately, the eyepiece that allowed people to look through the telescope is no longer attached, but Bradley said he hopes to find another eyepiece to use for the nights the public is invited into the observatory.

It’s very likely he can find something close by, as he said since word of the telescope’s return got out “all these people have come out of the woodwork who know so much more about telescopes than me, including a guy in Redwood Valley who used to clean the lens of the observatory’s other telescope, built in 1870.”

All the interest gives Bradley hope that the city may be able to keep the telescope longer, as it currently is back only on a one-year loan from the National Geodetic Survey.

“We want as many people to see the telescope as possible, to appreciate a tangible part of our cultural heritage,” he said. “Our history isn’t frozen like fossils in amber. It’s right here. And if it’s well-received, we’ll ask for another year.”

One person who didn’t need to be convinced of the telescope’s significance is Kristy Kelly, who was on the Ukiah City Council when the city acquired the property now known as Observatory Park in 1991. At the time, the city was not sure what it wanted to do with the site, and for the next 20-plus years, the building and surrounding land was closed to the public.

But Kelly knew the importance of the site, as she and her son Patrick stumbled upon its history while on a trip to the United Kingdom for his 12th birthday in 1989.

“His teacher recommended we go to The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, where you can stand on the Prime Meridian line, with one foot in today and one in tomorrow,” she said, recalling how they turned a corner in the National Maritime Museum and were surprised to see the name of their hometown, “Ukiah,” featured prominently in a display about the latitude observatories. “I never knew it was here, and it was right around the corner from our house.”

That trip may have sparked a lifetime love of science for her son, who now teaches math and physics in Lakeport, and Kelly is enjoying the discoveries she and Bradley make every day while inspecting the telescope.

“We found these very small numbers etched down here,” she said, pointing to tiny, ruler-like marks along the base of the telescope that the observers used a magnifying glass to read. “That’s how incredibly precise their measurements were.”

By 1982, computers and satellites made the telescopes obsolete, and Ukiah’s was shipped off to storage in Virginia.

The telescope will be re-introduced to the public at an exhibit Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. at the park at 432 Observatory Ave.

Tonight, the local representative for the NGS, Dana Caccamise will give a talk on the observatories and Ukiah’s deep roots in science. The talk begins at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Ukiah City Council’s chambers at 300 Seminary Ave. Caccamise will also attend Saturday’s event.

For more information about tonight’s lecture, turn to Page 2