Written by: Rebecca Straits (Rjs006@marietta.edu)
A lesser-known fact about Marietta College is that it is home to facilities that can explore the cosmos. Two places on campus allow students and the community to experience outer space firsthand. Those being the Anderson Hancock Planetarium and the Gurly Observatory.
The Anderson Hancock Planetarium is attached to the Ricky Science Center along Fourth Street on the Marietta College campus. Officially opened on May 8th, 2009, the building is named after two emeriti physics professors: Dr. Les Anderson and Dr. Whit Hancock.
Inspired by the professor’s dedication to their field and students, Brenda and Dave Rickey ‘78 and Daughters Foundations turned their dreams of a planetarium into reality by funding the construction (Marietta College, n.d.).
The planetarium sits at 4,400 square feet, seats up to 102 people, and is composed of two parts: the
Jasulevicus Gallery and the Putnam Family Theater.
Spread across the walls of the Jasulevicus Gallery are photos from Astronomy magazine, and the
Galactic Center Region from NASA’s Great Observatories. The photos depict stars, star clusters, and
a graph measuring star heat. The gallery also showcases a flag and patch that were onboard the
Challenger space shuttle. These artifacts are from its first flight in April 1983 and were given to Marietta College from NASA.
The Putnam Family Theater is a Star Theater that houses a Goto Chronos hybrid system, a
mechanical star projector that can replicate the night sky from any point in time, past, present, or
future (Marietta College, n.d.). The cylindrical, domed roof theater seats up to 102 people and has letters on the walls to mark the cardinal directions.
An even lesser recognized facility at Marietta College is the Gurley Observatory. The Gurley Observatory sits atop Mills Hall along with an observation platform, storage, and laboratory room. Named after the director of the observatory, William Chamberlain Gurley, the Observatory was built around 1882 and is home to a fourteen-inch Meade LX200GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, along with several smaller telescopes for student use. (Observatories of Ohio n.d.).
The Planetarium has monthly shows that are open to the public; however, the observatory is only
open to students taking astronomy courses. You can find out more about the planetarium shows
here: https://www.marietta.edu/tags/planetarium-2024-25.
References
Marietta College. (n.d.). Anderson Hancock Planetarium. https://www.marietta.edu/planetarium
Glass plaque with information on Anderson Hancock planetarium. Marietta College, Marietta Ohio
Observatories of Ohio. (n.d.) Gurley Observatory. https://observatoriesofohio.org/gurley
observatory/
Edited by: Zachary Worstell (zdw001@marietta.edu)
