Dr. MacRae's remarks

I sincerely regret that a long-standing engagement is preventing me and my wife from being present at this dedication ceremony. We are disappointed not only because of our regard and affection for Helen Hogg, but also because the telescope in Chile is such an important part of astronomy at the University of Toronto.

When I first became associated with the David Dunlap Observatory, as a summer student assistant in 1936 and as an observer cum plate-measurer in 1937-38, Helen Hogg was, if she will pardon the word, a fixture. She had already established herself in her unique scientific niche --- variable stars in globular clusters. Several times a year the 74-inch mirror would be resilvered (not until a year or two later could it be aluminized) and the telescope would be converted from Cassegrain to Newtonian form, so that Helen could use it for a week or ten days for a timely expansion of her collection of photographs of the stars in her favourite clusters.

Cassegrain observing, let it be said, was and is relatively safe and sensible; the observer is always on the floor of the dome or a few feet up at the eyepiece. But observing at the Newtonian focus was a different matter. For all the long night Helen would work alone, perched in the cantilevered cage at the top end of Canada's largest telescope, high above the floor and with everything below in total darkness.

Her husband Frank, and later Gerry Longworth or Frank Hawker, would be down there below, moving the telescope when need be and changing the photographic plates in the plate holders as the photographs were taken and the night wore on. Inexperienced Newtonian observers like myself were not particularly welcome on those nights.

I remember going up to the empty Newtonian cage on one of my regular nights, however, just for a look at the sky, and finding a very peculiar object on the floor of the cage. It was a rather substantial woman's handbag, with a firm clasp, and attached to it was a very long rope. I was mystified until Gerry Longworth explained. That was how Helen sent the exposed plate down to husband Frank, and how she hauled up the fresh unexposed plate for the next shot. I wonder if Helen still has that dedicated bag. I wonder if the modern New Technology Telescopes deal as efficiently with problems of this sort.

The night's work would go on in silence and darkness, except for the mesmerizing sound of the drive motor and the occasional clicks from Helen's guiding. I am told, though, that sometimes a piercing reverberation would shatter the silence of the dome. It would be Helen's voice as she commented with great excitement on something or other than she had seen from her vantage point, perhaps a threatening cloud on the far horizon, or a meteor near her field of view. Whatever it was that she said was always quite unintelligible to those on the floor, the words and meaning being lost in the echoes and re-echos of the hollow dome.

There came a time when Helen had another of her novel ideas. ``Most of my globulars are in the constellations of the southern sky. Why not apply for time on a telescope at a southern observatory where they would be more accessible?'' Nowadays we all take this sort of thing for granted. But fifty or sixty years ago few if any astronomers went away off from home just to observe for a short period. Helen became one of the first "suitcase astronomers" when she applied to Edwin F. Carpenter, the Director of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, and was granted observing time on the 36-inch (91 cm) diameter telescope near Tucson. That was about as far south as she could go then, and it was quite a journey --- much more of an undertaking than is required nowadays to make a trip to the U. of T. Southern Observatory in Chile. I think it is accurate to say that Helen Hogg was the first Canadian astronomer who went south specifically for the sake of the richness of the southern sky, and the darkness and fine seeing of a dry desert site. It was the auspicious initiation of a habit that is now quite routine for many University of Toronto students and staff.

It was no wonder that DDO sought a southern site for a telescope of our own in the late sixties. Helen's record of research gave us one of our major incentives to establish a foothold on Las Campanas in Chile. Regrettably, Helen herself has not yet been there. But, in the field of variable stars in clusters which has been for so long Helen Hogg's specialty, several associates, notably Dr Christine Clement, have stepped in and are helping to fulfill the telescope's purpose.

Moreover, under Bob Garrison's guidance, and hard work by the DDO support staff, the telescope has been kept in step with modern instrumentation. Perhaps the biggest change is that photographic plates, on which Helen so long depended, are being phased out. Instead, the latest electronic devices, more efficient and more trustworthy, are routinely in use.

In the past we at DDO have been very proud of our southern telescope. For the future, we see it as being an instrument that is remarkably versatile, and continuously productive of first class research. It will fully deserve the new name it is about to receive.