The original College observatory, photographed in 1890. (Musselman Library Special Collections and Archives)
By Vincent DiFonzo, Editor-in-Chief
Professor Ian Clarke began working for Gettysburg College in 1991, taking a job as an adjunct English professor for his first years at the College. He soon made a significant and unexpected career change. After taking some time off to take care of his young kids in the late 90s, he returned to Gettysburg College with a dramatically different title — astronomy lab instructor. Soon after, he took over as the director of Hatter Planetarium.
Explaining his career shift towards astronomy, Clarke said that Laurence Marschall, professor emeritus of physics, approached him and asked if he’d be interested in running astronomy labs around the year 2000. Since then, and despite his background in English and poetry, Clarke hasn’t looked back.
“None of this was ever part of my life plan or anything like that, which I think is a shout out to the liberal arts,” said Clarke. “It’s good to have a lot of different things in your toolkit that you might do because you never know what opportunities might arise.”
The College’s planetarium, located in Masters Hall, was built in 1966 and opened the following year after an unexpected donation from George G. Hatter, an alumni from the class of 1911. Clarke explained that Hatter wanted his alma mater to have a planetarium, given the unprecedented innovations in astronomy throughout the 1960s — the space age had begun.
Hatter’s donation “kick started a sort of renewal of astronomy at the College.” Astronomy was nothing new at Gettysburg College, as astronomy courses have been taught at the College since its founding in 1832. Michael Jacobs, professor of mathematics, chemistry and natural philosophy until 1866, was the first to teach astronomy at the College.
Jacobs was instrumental in securing the College’s first telescope in 1853. He used this telescope to observe the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, keeping the only record of weather conditions during the battle. Using the portable telescope, “[Jacobs] viewed the battle from the roof of his house,” explained Clarke.
In the 1870s, the College began raising funds for the construction of its first observatory. The College obtained a larger telescope, and construction on the observatory finished in 1874. It was located where the West Quad residential buildings now sit, just off North Washington Street.
Stevens Hall with the original observatory seen in the background in 1880, taken by William H. Tipton. (Musselman Library Special Collections and Archives)
The original observatory housed this larger telescope. The physics department is still in possession of the telescope’s original tube and lens, which has since been cracked. For a time, two students called the original observatory home. They were responsible for maintenance.
Later, the College stopped allowing students to live inside the observatory, leading to a decline in its condition. Eventually, the old observatory fell into disrepair. No longer in use, the observatory was torn down in 1925.
Decades later, as Hatter Planetarium was just beginning to operate, its first director, professor Eugene Milone, wanted a new observatory for the College. His efforts kick-started its construction. Situated on land leased from the National Parks Service, the current observatory is located just north of the West Building, near the baseball field, the Painted Turtle Farm and the railroad tracks. The tracks used to be placed closer to the observatory, which created problems with stability because passing trains would rock the telescope.
Reporting on the planetarium’s construction from The Gettysburgian archive. (The Gettysburgian: April 9, 1965 issue)
The observatory contains three rooms: the dome, the warm room and the classroom. The dome houses the telescope — a 16-inch f/11 computer controlled Ealing Cassegrain reflector telescope that was purchased in 1969. The warm room, or control room, was where the telescope was operated from, housing two main computers that controlled the telescope. The last time students worked in this room was in 2022 as part of an X-SIG summer research program. Unfortunately, the telescope stopped functioning later in 2022 and has not been usable since.
The planetarium remains in use constantly, having received a major renovation in 2016 that transformed the planetarium into a classroom and upgraded the projector to digital. Clarke explained how the previously-used mechanical projector worked.
“The stars are represented by the holes and lenses in the ball. They’re fixed in relationship to one another. But the planets are not, they have to move,” explained Clarke. “So each planet has its own little system with the gear and a mirror and you had to align those periodically. There was this whole process that you went through with little thumb screws and mirrors, and there’s an individual little 12-volt bulb for each planet. It’s crazy, but that was how planetariums worked.”
Reporting on the observatory telescope from The Gettysburgian archive. (The Gettysburgian: Jan. 10, 1969)
In addition to serving as a classroom for 100-level astronomy courses, the planetarium frequently hosts planetarium shows for the public and for field trip groups.
Every month, Clarke, along with student staff, put on a show called “The Sky This Month” which “shows you what to look for from your backyard in the upcoming month as well as explaining recent astronomical news.”
Additionally, the planetarium has hosted a variety of shows, many of which are developed by planetarium staff. Later this month, the planetarium will debut a new show called “Astronomy of the Civil War Era.”
Ole Beu ’25, an international and global studies and French double major with an economics minor, is one of five student assistants at the planetarium.
“It’s something I’m passionate about, and that’s why I really enjoy [working at the planetarium],” said Beu.
Explaining how he got into astronomy as a non-STEM major, Beu explained that he took Astronomy 102 (Stellar Astronomy) to fulfill the science with lab requirement and ended up with a fascination for the field. One lab that stood out to him involved measuring the diameter of the Milky Way using radio waves.
“It was really awesome to see how you can figure out so much about where we are in space just by looking outward,” he said.
Beu found out from a friend that the planetarium employed student workers, and soon after, he approached Clarke to express his interest and was hired. In his position, Beu learned how to use the planetarium software and animated the introduction of four of the planetarium shows.
The student assistants split work on the planetarium shows and contribute to developing new shows. One example that Beu worked on is called “Bob the Battlefield Bunny,” a show intended for younger audiences that covers seasons, moon phases and the night sky.
“The cool part, of course, is presenting that show to elementary school students,” said Beu. “We often have field trips that came in from Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. We had a charter school come one week. To see [the students] be like, ‘Oh my god, look at the bunny over there.’ That was fun.”
Beu said one of his favorite parts of running planetarium shows are Q&A sessions. “One of the best parts is to teach something — to other kids, to other students, to other people — that you know you’re passionate about.”
This article originally appeared on pages 12 and 13 of the No. 6 April 2025 edition of The Gettysburgian magazine
The College observatory pictured in 2025. (Photo Vincent DiFonzo/The Gettysburgian)
