Couple Create a Heavenly Haven : They Are Right at Home With Stairways to the Stars and a Powerful Telescope

This world isn’t big enough for Joe and Dorothy Persell.

An affable Chatsworth couple, the Persells have long been filled with wonderment at what is going on with the stars above them.

Accordingly, five years ago they made a very unusual modification to their one-story, ranch-style house--they built an observatory on the roof.

Reaching 28 feet above the street, the dome, 11 feet in diameter, houses a 480-power telescope with an eight-inch aperture. It is a combination of telescope and dome that is in use at many universities, the Persells said.

But what looks at home on a spacious college campus doesn’t necessarily look at home on or near a home.

The Persells are aware that their gray-domed observatory sticks out. But they said their home’s being next to an elementary school playground makes the observatory less jarring than if they were surrounded by tract houses.

“Still, it looks a little crazy,” said Joe Persell, 56, with a chuckle. An electrical engineer, he designed and oversaw construction of the observatory.

“But we decided nothing else would fit our needs,” said Dorothy Persell, a 51-year-old executive secretary whose lifelong love of heavenly bodies got the pair started toward serious stargazing.

The Persells said they began looking skyward shortly after their marriage 14 years ago.

First it was a pair of binoculars and a C-clamp to steady them, they said. Then it was a series of increasingly heavy telescopes.

Since city lights make stargazing difficult, they spent many nights carrying a telescope and tripod to remote mountaintops.

“I got lazy,” said Joe Persell. “The equipment is heavy. I began to look for an easier way to do things.”

After more than a year of research and planning, in August, 1981, the couple hired workmen to cut a circular hole in the roof of their four-bedroom, two-bath house.

‘Two Crazy Weeks’

In what the pair called the “two crazy weeks” that followed, the crew installed two sets of folding stairs, one leading from the main hallway to the attic, the other from the attic up above the roof line.

One piece at a time, they carried the aluminum dome up the stairs and assembled it.

Next they lowered a well casing six inches in diameter through the attic, passed it through a hall closet, and buried its base six feet below the house.

After filling the pipe with concrete, they mounted the telescope on its top.

Sensitive Instrument

Isolating it from house vibrations was essential, Joe Persell said, adding, “The instrument is so sensitive, if you walked across the floor, the telescope would shake all over and be unusable.”

As a final touch, workmen added shingles in an effort to make the structure blend with the roof.

The Persells would not say how much the observatory cost.

Powered by an electric motor, the dome revolves 360 degrees, and an 18-inch-wide slit opens to allow the telescope to peer into the heavens.

The narrowness of the opening and the height of the dome above the street minimizes light pollution, the Persells said.

Since its installation, the pair have used the observatory to track and photograph Halley’s comet and to study and record various nebulae and star clusters.

Once, under rare ideal conditions, they spotted and identified a celestial object 52 million light-years distant, they said.

“There is no typical evening in the observatory,” Dorothy Persell said.

When they climb the two sets of narrow and steep stairs to the dome, they stay “anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours,” she said, adding, “It depends on conditions and our moods and what we want to study.”

Content With Result

But they have concluded that the system they installed was “perfect for our needs,” her husband said. “We wouldn’t change a thing if we did it over again.”

Looking forward to retirement a few years hence, they have scouted New Mexico for sites to build a house made for stargazing.

They said the dome could easily be removed from the Chatsworth house, and its roof could be restored to the original condition.

At a new house, the Persells said, they plan to install a 24-inch telescope they have been examining.

Other things also will be different, said Joe Persell. There will be no tortuous folding stairs, and the observatory will not look like an afterthought.

“Next time, we are going to build an observatory with a house attached,” he said, “rather than the other way around.”