Theft of College’s Telescope Bemoaned

Grossmont Community College officials are still at a loss: why would someone want to steal a 330-pound telescope from the school’s observatory.

“I’m just flabbergasted,” said Steve Ouellet, a physics and astronomy technician at the school. “It’s just taking away from the students.”

Ouellet said the 14-inch Celestron telescope was an indispensable research tool for students viewing the planets and stars and that its disappearance March 20 has crippled Grossmont’s astronomy program.

“It has wrecked everything. When I first went out there and saw it missing, I almost wanted to cry.”

He said students were scheduled to use the big telescope in classes at the observatory this week to view Halley’s Comet. Now they must use smaller telescopes which will give them a poorer view of the comet, he said.

The telescope’s replacement cost is pegged at $22,000, according to school officials. Ouellet said the telescope is insured but he was not sure how long it would take to replace it.

“We accumulated our equipment over the last seven years, a little bit each year,” he said. “It’s going to take us a long time to get all of that back.”

The thieves broke into the observatory, which is bounded by three canyons and a baseball field, and used a battery-powered drill to remove the telescope from its concrete base. That task, according to Ouellet, could not have been easy.