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Ground breaks on $4.4 million SFU observatory

Ground has finally broken on a $4.4 million observatory project at SFU’s Burnaby campus. Orginally slated for completion in August 2014, construction on the Trottier Observatory began Sept. 9 and is expected to last into February 2015.

Ground has finally broken on a $4.4 million observatory project at SFU’s Burnaby campus.

Orginally slated for completion in August 2014, construction on the Trottier Observatory began Sept. 9 and is expected to last into February 2015.

“I'm extremely pleased with the way the project has developed,” said physics professor Howard Trottier, who is spearheading the project, “and it actually makes much more sense to open it in the year of SFU's 50th anniversary.”

The original timeline was only a rough estimate, he said, and planners spent the extra time working out landscaping details.

“The original project head once described the project as 90 per cent about the landscaping, and he was quite right,” Trottier said. “The site will be seen and used by far more people during the day than on those nights when the weather cooperates and the observatory is open. The site should turn into a new focal point for campus and community life, and we wanted to use it to convey the science of astronomy, and the beauty of the cosmos as revealed by science to the fullest extent possible.”

The observatory, which will feature a dome six metres in diameter, housing a 0.7-metre diameter reflector telescope that is capable of tracking distant galaxies billions of years old, is being built at the east end of campus near Strand Hall and will be open to the general public.

The telescope will also provide a digital feed and can be remotely accessed and deployed by community groups and schools across Canada.

Next to the observatory dome, a viewing plaza will feature sundials and space for people to set up their own telescopes.

Together with the Trottier Studio for Innovative Science Education, opened in January, the new observatory will offer hands-on science activities and provide a permanent site for outreach programs that already attract 5,000 children, youth and other visitors to the local campus annually.

Trottier's vision of a new observatory and outreach centre at SFU has become a reality thanks to a major chunk of funding from the Trottier Foundation, headed by Trottier’s brother and sister-in-law, Lorne and Louise Trottier.

For updates on the project, see Trottier’s blog at www.sfu.ca/starrynights.