Fontana, Wis. -- The home of American astronomy is under attack, not from aliens but from the revered educational institution that gave it life 100 years ago ("An old but fabled stargazer," Editorial, March 30). Yerkes Observatory, home of the world's largest refracting telescope, a 20-ton goliath, and the site where many significant astronomical discoveries have been made through the 20th Century, has now, at the dawn of the 21st, been put on the auction block by its creator and owner, the University of Chicago. The university has been in negotiation since last summer with an unnamed East Coast developer that plans to fill its heavily wooded, lakeside grounds with weekend homes and a European-style spa. Like the personification of a society in decline, the halls and grounds trod by Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble, among the world's great astronomers and scientists, may soon be the site of modern barbecues and bacchanals. The last 500 feet of rustic, unspoiled lake edge on historic Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, still much as the Indians left it 160 years ago, may become some millionaire's front yard, abuzz with jet skis and afloat with chocolate martinis. What happened at this proud university, endowed with billions, which prompted it to plan to cash in its historic Yerkes, where research equipment headed for the stratosphere, is still being fabricated in the labs of its fabled structure, and where great telescopes still probe the heavens? Does the university need the reported selling price of less than $10 million so badly that it would abandon a unique part of its own heritage for a housing development and some hot tubs? Local citizens and institutions at Geneva Lake are now meeting, asking this question, and wondering why the great university 80 miles away has not asked itself, and them, how Yerkes might continue to contribute great things into the 21st Century. It is ironic that even a great repository of learning and insight like the University of Chicago seems so ready to discard this global icon of astronomy and history, a child of its own dreams of the heavens, and a site with so much seeming potential for the future. Must this link to the heavens be forever closed, or will a new day and a new vision for the future be forged on the shores of Geneva Lake?

Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune