By B.A. Morelli, The Gazette

IOWA CITY The University of Iowa dedicated a revamped observatory with three high-powered telescopes to famed space scientist and longtime UI professor James Van Allen on Friday afternoon.

The 18-foot clamshell dome observatory is mounted high above most of Iowa Citys skyline on the roof of the seven-story Van Allen Hall on campus. The building houses the UI physics and astronomy department that Van Allen helped build.

This combines the technology he loved, and the ability for students to walk one-flight up from the laboratory to use it, said Robert Mutel, a UI physics astronomy professor involved in launching the new observatory.

Van Allen, who died in 2006 at age 91, was a space pioneer who discovered radiation belts that now bear his name.

The old observatory had fallen in disrepair and held outdated technology. It hadnt been used in about 15 years, Mutel said. Students view to the heavens came from remote access to a telescope called Rigel based in Arizona.

With a grant from the Carver Charitable Trust, the department set about returning students access to space research back to arms reach. The new fiberglass structure observatory electronically opens to the sky and at the center three telescopes a solar, planetary and astronomical are fastened together.

The project cost approximately $140,000, including $36,000 for the primary astronomical telescope thats powerful enough to find quasars billions of light years away.

The observatory will primarily be used by students, but the hope is to provide public access as well, such as for astronomy clubs.

Its pretty awe-inspiring, said Erin Maier, a sophomore astronomy and physics student, who helped set up the new observatory and telescopes. We are looking at entire galaxies just like ours in a single image.

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University of Iowa dedicates observatory to James Van Allen