Night Shift

On a clear February night, members of the public were welcomed to the Stanford Student Observatory for an evening with the stars. Nestled in the hills above the Stanford Golf Course, the observatory was built in the early 1970s by students using scrap materials, donated tools and expertise, and a lot of sweat. Nicholas Suntzeff, ’74, who started the observatory project with Michael Kast, ’74, MS ’76, later recalled students (including future astronaut Sally Ride, ’73, MS ’75, PhD ’78) manufacturing parts, installing insulation, and painting. Nobel Prize–winning physics professor Robert Hofstadter did some of the carpentry. The 15-foot dome was a discard from Leuschner Observatory at UC Berkeley, and transporting it involved some (perhaps predictable) student guile. It was too large to take on the highway, Suntzeff said. “But we crossed our fingers, and the CHP never caught us.”