Should the David Dunlap Observatory be closed permanently?

A grammar correction. It's means "it is." The gender-neutral, singular, first-person possessive adjective is "its," without the apostrophe.

I'm against the closure of the observatory. It is not necessary that an observatory be able to do much cutting-edge work in order to be worth maintaining. As long as it can do useful work, and thus relieve more capable observing stations of those chores, it should be kept in operation.

We have heard of this far off in Australia, since we have a similar problem with the Mt. Stromlo Observatory which is barely 10 minutes drive from my house.

The main telescope at Mt. Stromlo (near Canberra) was similar to that at Toronto and built by the same company, but was destroyed by the firestorm of January 2003. Before the fires astronomers were complaining of severe light pollution, though one of the t'scopes had been extensively refitted for dark matter studies on the Magellanic Clouds. Despite the light pollution and the destruction of the main t'scope and some other facilities, the operators are proposing to keep the site open.

This makes no sense to me. A perfectly good road runs past Mt. Stromlo and across the river valley into the Brindabella ranges to the west. Putting a line of hills and another 20 or 25 kilometres between Canberra and a t'scope would reduce light pollution and there are higher hills there too. Expansion of the city is going north and south at present so it would be a very long time before encroachment of the suburbs would reach the telescope.

You do not need a 74 inch telescope for pubic astronomy, a 10 inch one would be more than adequate.

My conclusion? Close both of them and relocate to better sites.

The question is: Close it for what? Still workable implies, that it needs an expensive overhaul to become comparable with modern observatories.

So, if closing this observatory in the realm of the department means, that other better observatories could be operated, just do it. It makes no sense to keep an observatory running out of sentimental memories on past discoveries.

Also, it makes good sense today, to operate an astrophysics department without own telescope. Most good observatories are shared by many departments and financed together. And that as far as I know, without fights over the observation time.

We have far too many observatories currently to operate effective, thanks to it being en vogue for a while to build observatories at any place, even where it is hindered by bad environment conditions.

The only useful thing it could do, which I see, is doing NEO surveys and allow public astronomy. But this requires a good mix of funding from scientific organizations and donations.

The observatory should not be closed permanently. Your question about Dr Martin is none of my business, and to pin responsibility for the sale on him would be incorrect.

The Dunlap Observatory has until recently been important in the study of binary and variable stars, although U of T and other ACURA Canadian universities have a long term plan to study cosmic origins that are best observed with the largest and newest telescopes in the world, in Hawaii and South America. Some of the funds from the sale will be invested in these new offshore observatories. The best possible future for the 1.88-metre telescope is that it be allowed to continue making observations like the ones it has done until recently, and that it be fitted out with a high-quality spectrograph to allow it to look for extrasolar planets like its twin telescope at Okayama Observatory in Japan has successfully done.

Supernova 1987A was not discovered from the Dunlap Observatory, and was not observable north of the 21st Parallel.

I have many fond personal memories of the DDO from my many visits to it over a 50-year period. I would like to see it preserved in some way, but realistically I doubt it can survive as a functioning professional observatory, largely because its location is hopelessly bad in terms of light pollution and poor weather. Smaller telescopes in better locations can be far more productive. The buildings are beautiful and the 74-inch telescope a magnificent artifact. It's the only telescope of its size through which the general public has actually been able to look for many years.

I know it's a historic entity but sometimes things lose their practical value.

I'm sure if you could ask Helen Hogg she would want to keep it forever.

I've been there a few times and my hobby has been astronomy for over 70 years and i've lived near the DDO all my life but like me maybe sometimes things can lose their value and the sentimental aspect may have been outlived.

I can still go on for a while but like the DDO all things may have to come to an end.