Happy Birthday, AAAA!

The first meeting of the Ames Area Amateur Astronomers (AAAA) took place 40 years ago today: Saturday, June 2, 1979. Central Junior High Earth Science teacher Jack Troeger and Welch Junior High Earth Science Teacher Ron Bredeson held the first meeting in Jack’s classroom in the building that is now the Ames City Hall. This was a great start to a great astronomy club. Here’s to the next 40 years!

And, we just passed another important milestone in AAAA history. The grand opening of the original McFarland Park Observatory took place 35 years ago on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28, 1984. Back then, the pavement ended at the intersection of Dayton Rd. & County Road E-29, northeast of Ames, Iowa, and it was gravel the rest of the way.

The first McFarland Park Observatory with its second telescope, a 12.5-inch Newtonian & Cassegrain telescope. The first telescope was a 13.1-inch Coulter Odyssey Dobsonian.
Observatory manager Jim Doggett and AAAA president David Oesper inside the original McFarland Park Observatory. Lower right photo is Julie Oesper and Katie Dilks watching the spectacular aurora borealis display the evening of November 8, 1991.

The AAAA purchased a backyard-observatory silo-top dome from Glen Hankins in Nevada on Saturday, September 27, 1980, and then-Ranger (and later Story County Conservation Director) Steve Lekwa of McFarland Park was instrumental in allowing the AAAA to build its observatory at its present site at McFarland Park. The much-improved replacement roll-off-roof observatory, named after club members and benefactors Bertrand & Mary Adams, was completed in 2000. The only part of the original observatory structure that remains is the telescope pier!