The dome of the Zeiss telescope at Auckland's Stardome Observatory and Planetarium after the theft of copper from its dome. Photo: Supplied
Thieves have targeted a telescope at Auckland's Stardome Observatory and Planetarium, stealing copper from its dome.
The Zeiss telescope, installed at the observatory in Epsom, more than half a century ago, had sheets of copper stripped from it on Sunday.
Police said it appeared the thieves had got into the the dome roof of the observatory via scaffolding being used to repair the planetarium and observatory roof.
The copper was pulled off the Zeiss telescope's dome, rolled into balls and thrown off the edge of the scaffolding.
"Stealing copper from one of Auckland's icons is deplorable," Auckland City East Inspector Rachel Dolheguy said.
"If anyone has unwillingly purchased copper and you are unaware of where it has come from please come forward."
Stardome chief executive Victoria Travers said it was estimated more than 1 million people had looked through the Zeiss telescope since it was installed in 1967.
"It's so upsetting to see the damage to our beautiful telescope dome, which has been a gorgeous feature of our building for 56 years.
"Over half of the copper has been stripped off, and we won't be able to use our Zeiss telescope until the dome is fixed."
She told Checkpoint it was a brutal thing to see when they arrived at work on Monday morning and some of the observatory's volunteers were around when the Zeiss telescope was first installed in 1967.
"So all the staff are deeply affected and many of those volunteers as well."
The cost of repairing it was still being assessed but it could be $350,000, Travers said.
"It's because it's so bespoke and it's such a very particular piece of work and it has timber underneath it, there's mechanics so it moves and the aperture opens.
"The actual value of the copper was probably only a couple of thousand dollars, but the damage it's caused is really really significant."
Stardome was now looking to work through its insurance claim and how to raise some funds, she said.
The police forensics team had been at the site and all scrap metal dealers had been alerted, she said.
Historic telescope
The EWB Zeiss telescope was once used to assist NASA with the moon landing, the Observatory said.
Named in memory of its donor, Edith Winstone Blackwell MBE, the telescope is one of only around 25 of its kind in use around the world.
It reopened to the public in May 2022 after an 18-month upgrade to fully computerise it. Previously operators had to manually move the half-tonne telescope to the correct coordinates to find an object in the sky.
For over five decades the telescope was operated as a "push-to" telescope. This meant astronomers had to physically rotate the telescope along an axis on its mount, the Observatory said after the upgrade. Most of its early work, including assistance to NASA on the Apollo moon landing missions, was done this way.
When humans went to the Moon, the Zeiss was part of a network of instruments around the world used to manually track the missions during the time Houston did not have radio contact with its astronauts.
It is the largest publicly accessible telescope in the North Island. Visitors can be shown objects in the Southern night sky from the Moon to the inner and outer planets and stars in deep space.
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on the 105 phone service or online quoting reference number P054727538.
