Zito

A few weeks ago, we saw this little notice in the weekly bulletin from Lilly’s elementary school:

“Due to the increased interest in viewing Mars, the Zito Observatory, located at 800 West Hassell Road Hoffman Estates, IL, will be open to the public (weather permitting) on the following evenings: Friday, October 28, 2005 & Friday, November 4, 2005.

“The hours for the viewing will be from 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. There will be no formal presentation, but Observatory Directors will be on hand to assist and answer questions.”

The Zito Observatory? In Hoffman Estates? We’d penciled in a look-see on the 28th, but the Halloween party that night kept us busy until about 9:30, and we didn’t want to rush on over and look for the place in the dark. In the middle of the next week, during the daylight hours, I had a chance to drive by that address. It turned out that it was Eisenhower Junior High School, Home of the Eagles. There was an observatory dome on top of the building.

So on Friday we drove over to see Mars, but for me the real curiosity was a junior high school with an observatory. Signs at the entrance of a side door said this way to the observatory, and we climbed a couple of stories to reach it. About a dozen other people were around, some student volunteers. Inside the dome, which was illuminated only with red lights, a steep staircase led to the viewing platform. Sure enough, it was a genuine observatory, complete with a slit in the dome.

I looked at Mars. I didn’t take any notes on the make of the telescope, or its size. Enough to say that it’s smaller than you’d find at a larger observatory, but larger than I would consider buying for backyard use. Mars, curiously, was pale yellow that night. The Yellow Planet just doesn’t have that fearsome ring to it, but I chalked it up to local atmospheric conditions. Yuriko looked as well, but we couldn’t persuade Lilly to. She wouldn’t admit it, but I think she was a little scared of the whole place.

I asked the adult who seemed to be in charge why there was an observatory here. “Every junior high school in the district has a theme,” he told me. “Arts or science of some kind. Back in the ’70s when they built this one, they decided that astronomy would be the theme.”

There are a lot of junior high schools in this country. How many, I wonder, feature observatories? One? It’s possible. I might have seen the only one.