March 14, 2021
Carlton Observatory telescopes stolen
News-Register file photo##At a star party in Carlton in 2018, Kendall Stephens peers through the viewfinder of “BigBlue.”
Submitted photo##The missing trailer in which Big Blue and another telescope were stored.
Hundreds of children and adults had marveled at seeing Saturn and other planets through “Big Blue,” the main telescope for the planned Carlton Observatory.
Now the 15-inch Newtonian telescope is missing, along with another prized scope and the trailer in which they were stored.
Janet Juelke and her husband, Forrest Babcock, who are working toward building an observatory in Yamhill County since they moved to Carlton in 2013, discovered the trailer had been stolen March 11 or 12. The forest green, 20-foot-long Wells Cargo trailer had been stored at Juelke’s daughter’s house on Bald Peak Road, a rural site on the border of Yamhill and Washington counties.