Penn State astronomy pioneers shaped department's past, present and future

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Over the years, the Penn State Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics has hosted many visitors on the rooftop of Davey Lab for evening telescope observing programs, and each year hundreds more participate in planetarium shows under the small dome in a classroom on the fifth floor.

The domes were part of the construction of Davey Lab in the early 1970s, and the planetarium was installed about a decade later in the mid-1980s. However, Penn State has been hosting these programs at University Park since long before these two facilities existed.

Years ago, near what are now the Eisenhower Parking Deck and University Health Services, there were two small brick buildings with metal domes atop them, which were built and used for telescope observing programs in the 1930s. Over the years, the domes' history had mostly been forgotten along with their use.

That changed several years ago, when a member of the Yeagley family visited campus and revealed to current astronomy faculty and staff that family patriarch Henry Yeagley (1899-1997) had taught telescope-making at Penn State in the 1930s and been the champion of small-telescope observing at the University.

Following that revelation, Professor of Astronomy Richard Wade decided to do some digging in the University Archives and in the archives of the Daily Collegian.

Observatories and planetaria

Wade learned that Yeagley had indeed taught a telescope-making course; that the Class of 1936 gifted a telescope in his honor that was originally mounted on the roof of Buckhout Laboratory; and that the Class of 1938 gifted the funding to build those two observatory domes previously located on Eisenhower Road.

What really caught Wade's attention, though, was that Yeagley had a bigger vision for bringing astronomy to the community: Yeagley had worked very hard to convince Penn State to build many more than those two observatories, and he wanted to bring a large planetarium to the University Park campus.

In the 1940s, Armand Spitz from the Franklin Institute began selling low-cost planetarium projectors so that institutions could bring planetarium shows to more people, and Yeagley built a small planetarium in Osmond Laboratory around one of those projectors. Armed with this knowledge, the department found the original projector in Davey Lab storage and restored it to working condition. The projector (serial No. 9) now is on display outside the entrance of the current planetarium on the fifth floor of Davey Lab.

For many years now, faculty in the department have been advocating for a new, 150-seat planetarium at University Park, and currently there is a proposal to build it at The Arboretum at Penn State.

While working to define the concept for this proposed new planetarium, the department found pictures and design drawings in the University Archives for a planetarium and multiple observatories that Henry Yeagley had proposed in the 1940s to be built on the current site of either the Penn State Golf Courses’ White Course or the Arboretum. The department was stunned to realize Yeagley's pitch had so closely matched their own — 70 years before.

Legacies intertwined

Some years ago, Henry’s son, the late Witt Yeagley, proud of his father’s work, shared with the department a 1986 Town & Gown magazine article which noted that the senior Yeagley was a physicist who taught telescope-making, but who in fact was not trained as a research astronomer.

Henry Yeagley wanted Penn State to build a department of astronomy, and he knew that meant the University would have to begin recruiting new faculty with doctorates in the field. So in the early 1950s he contacted Harlow Shapley, with whom he had studied at Harvard, to ask for recommendations for a new astronomy faculty hire at Penn State. Shapley suggested his advisee Carl Bauer (1916-2019), who had recently finished his doctorate; and so Bauer came to Penn State soon after as the University’s first faculty astronomer, and he subsequently created and taught many of the courses that would form the foundation of the undergraduate astronomy program.

Bauer’s daughters Cynthia Bauer-Levy and Deborah Gabriel said their father had a great love for teaching, and that he continued to grind mirrors for telescopes and present night sky tours in the Osmond Lab planetarium throughout his career.

Bauer made many contributions to the field through his research. He had a passion for chasing down meteorite falls, and his daughters shared stories of long searches for a meteorite that fell in eastern Pennsylvania, searches which ultimately were unsuccessful. However, Bauer’s legacy of contributions to the understanding of meteorite evolution came from his analyses of many other meteorite samples.

In a recent video recorded by his great-grandson, Bauer shared that at Harvard he also studied under Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who became the first woman to earn tenure as a professor from within that institution.

The Eberly College recently named its Science Achievement Graduate Fellowship in astronomy after Payne-Gaposchkin, to honor her status as a trailblazer in the field of astronomy and astrophysics. Although the connection was not known at the time, it proved quite fitting that the department was founded by an astronomer mentored by Payne-Gaposchkin.

Culture, community, memory

"Today, we often talk about how sharing the work we do through outreach efforts in our small planetarium or using the rooftop telescopes is an integral part of the culture in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State," said Christopher Palma, teaching professor of astronomy and astrophysics and associate dean in the Eberly College.

"Now that we know that these two pioneers of astronomy at Penn State — Henry Yeagley and Carl Bauer — believed in the same type of service to the community, it also feels like a great connection to our past.

"Although we wish we’d had the opportunity to honor both of these important founders during their lifetimes," Palma said, "we are glad that we can still do so now to keep their memories alive for future generations of Penn Staters."