One unexpected perk or having your own observatory? Getting to dress it up for the holidays. The observatory owned by 2011 Michele Chan ’83 and David Liang ’81 is lovingly nicknamed the Dome. It started as a fanciful daydream of Liang’s in the midst of their 2011 home renovation. “He talked to the architect who said, ‘Oh, I think it would be fun!’” recalled Chan. Neither Liang nor Chan were astronomy majors at MIT; they were both Course 6. Building the Dome, “was really about exploring things that you just want to say, wow, I wonder what’s there,” said Chan. Rather than build a costly custom dome, the couple ordered a fiberglass, pre-fabricated dome 10 feet in diameter. “It looks like the MIT dome,” said Chan. Almost every clear night, the couple climb up a ladder, walk through a door, turn on their high-powered telescope, and open a shutter on the observatory roof for the telescope to go through. Chan likens it to a giant tube peaking through an opening in an oil drum. #stars #mitalum #astronomy #halloween