Observing the heavens

A beautiful, bright sunny but windy day in Dundee. After a three hour screening programme at the Hospital (to see if I would suitable for including in a heart drug clinical trial) I headed for the the site of the Mills Observatory.

This was Britain’s first purpose-built public observatory and is in a magnificent woodland setting on the summit of Balgay Hill. It was gifted to the people of Dundee in 1935, with a bequest from John Mills, a linen and twine manufacturer and a keen amateur scientist. Mills Observatory was designed by the City Architect Mr McLellan Brown in collaboration with Professor Ralph Sampson the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. Built of sandstone, it has a distinctive 7-metre dome. It is the only British observatory to have been built with the sole aim of encouraging public understanding of science.

The Observatory now also has a 12 inch Meade Schmidt Cassegrain reflector which is fully computerised and can find 30,000 objects in the sky and a solar telescope which allows viewers to observe the sun safely during the summer months. There is also a variety of smaller telescopes and binoculars that visitors can use from the Mills Observatory’s viewing balcony or the car park.

The area is also very popular with dog walkers, and presumably the dogs like it too!