Stars above!

Ogdensburg - Bill Kroth wants to take people into the depths of the earth and lift them up to the stars—and his volunteer work as resident engineer at the Sterling Mine Museum in Ogdensburg gives him the chance to do both. The Ellis Observatory that stands today in a field of yellow mustard flowers on the museum grounds is Kroth’s brainchild, and he wants as many people as possible, especially children, to share in what the poet Walt Whitman called the “unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above.” “If a kid enjoys science, he or she is labeled as a geek, and that’s just not right,” Kroth says. The civil engineer, who describes himself as having been a “science geek since junior high school,” says he wants kids to be able to see the phases of Venus, the polar ice caps on Mars, the colored cloud bands and moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and its moons and the icy blue world of Uranus. Kroth was drawn to the mine in Ogdensburg by his fascination with the fluorescent minerals there. His family has owned a summer cabin nearby since the 1930s. “One starry, windy night in April about five years ago, I set up my telescope on the museum grounds,” Kroth says. “As the chilly wind whipped around, I kept thinking, this would be perfect if only I had a little building to house the telescope.” And the idea of the observatory was born. Today, local interest in the observatory is growing as more people realize it exists. And the more people that come, the more money there is to buy equipment to enhance the observatory. Recently, Kroth installed a connection from the big telescope to a special camera that enables people to view the night sky from a video screen in the gift shop, and Dr. Warren Miller has donated a 12-inch telescope to back up the 20-incher. For more information, contact Bill Kroth at 201-933- 3029 or E-mail: shastrogroup@aol.