DePauw University McKim Observatory Open House Volunteering (Fall 2025 - Spring 2026)
Through Fall 2025 and Spring 2026, I regularly volunteered at the McKim observatory. I worked closely with Dr. Mary Kertzman, Dr. Alexander Komives, Dr. Howard Brooks, and Dr. Oscar Qu to get a headcount of members of the Greencaslte community, greet people, answer questions, and give tours. We can see the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 open house hours below, along with descriptions of what celestial bodies we observed with the Clark Refractor that night:
The observatory is beautiful from the outside. The top of it has a big metal dome that opens up so the Clark Refractor can stick itsbig nose out and look at everything. The dome gets stuck and can't open when it's too icy. To reduce visual distortion from heat, they don't heat the building in the winter, which makes for an extremely chilly open house. We use red lights upstairs since it impairs your vision the least.
One of the most beloved artifacts in the McKim Observatory is something called "Bailey's Astral Lantern". It was originally made to map out the night sky and to depict the various constellations to people. Here's avideo of Dr. Mary Kertzman showcasing the lantern! Here are my own pictures of it below, but I'm not the best photographer...
Here are some other pictures from the inside of the observatory. Hover your mouse over each image for extra info:
McKim Observatory Slides Digitization Project (Spring 2026)
When I arrived to DePauw, Dr. Mary Kertzman mentioned that she'd appreciate help with digitizing their lantern slide collection and uploading it online in a searchable manner. Here's what the front of a typical lantern slide looks like:
Here's the quality of scan I was able to get by collaborating with the Archives department at the Putnam County Public Library:
I'm still in the process of getting all the slides scanned- I think there are about 800 of them. My girlfriend, Emma, helped me to set up a website to showcase the slides along with their tagged metadata. Here is the current version ofour McKim Slides Website! It's still a work in progress.