Great Moment: Climenhaga observatory

Smiling at the stars

One of the more familiar — and whimsical — sights on the UVic campus is the happy-face observatory dome on the roof of the Elliott building. The observatory is named after astrophysicist John Climenhaga, the founding head of UVic’s physics department and later dean of arts and science. Climenhaga championed the creation of UVic’s astronomy program and was adamant that an on-campus observatory be part of the package. Telescopes are rated by the size of their mirrors, which determine how much light they can gather. Over the years, the observatory has housed a succession of telescopes. The current 50-cm telescope, installed in 1976, has been used by countless students and has been routinely used by researchers to study the brightness variations of distant stars and to track the motions of near-Earth objects.

Student pranksters painted the two eyes on the dome in 1969, and the smile was added later — with the university continuing to keep fresh paint on the old joke begun by students to celebrate and encourage the UVic rugby team. The dome continues to smile even with the advent of a second observatory — housing Canada’s largest on-campus telescope — atop the nearby Bob Wright Centre. Meanwhile, Climenhaga’s vision has paid off — UVic astronomers are now world-renowned for their research on the formation of galaxies, stellar structure and evolution, and theoretical and observational cosmology.

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