STARRY SKIES AWAIT WORK TO START SOON ON PALMDALE DISTRICT'S OBSERVATORY.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Some 15 miles outside the peanut capital of Australia, construction could start as early as next month on a $26,000 observatory that will reveal the skies to Palmdale youngsters half a world away.

Palmdale School District's telescope south of Kingaroy, in sunny southeast Queensland, is expected to be operational in May, four months later than scheduled because negotiations with property owners and architects took longer than expected.

``We gave ourselves a year, and we needed a year-and-a-half,'' said Kathe Duren, vice president of the Palmdale Education Foundation, which is supporting the project.

The project will allow Palmdale schoolchildren to operate the 14-inch telescope via computers in their classrooms 7,350 miles away.

The observatory will be built on farmland about 155 miles inland from Brisbane, which is on Australia's east coast. The closest community is Kumbia, but the nearest town of any size is Kingaroy, population 7,500.

Kingaroy - the name comes from the Aborigine word for red ant - is a center of peanut and navy bean farming, settled by Europeans in the mid to late 1800s.

The land looks not unlike undeveloped Southern California maybe 50 years ago, though greener - fields edged by eucalyptus trees, with blue mountains as a backdrop.

The property is owned by an amateur astronomer who lives in Brisbane and is an acquaintance of Gil Clark, the Mount Wilson Observatory telescope education program director hired to set up the telescope. The landowner will be paid a stipend of about $350 a month to maintain and monitor the telescope, Clark said.

Clark said construction of the observatory could start by mid-March. He plans travel to Australia in mid-May to install the telescope.

``Right now is the perfect time. It's summer there. They are not troubled with rains or anything else,'' Clark said.

The observatory is estimated to cost about $20,000. Other costs include shipping costs and import taxes, which have yet to be determined. A nominal fee will be paid monthly for an Internet hookup, Palmdale Education Foundation's Duren said.

``The big unknown to us is the importation and taxes. Whenever you send something into a country, that country has import taxes they can charge,'' Duren said. ``We are working with the Australian government to find out what category we fall in.''

Last May, the district announced it was getting $40,000 from the state for the project, secured with the help of Assemblyman George Runner, R- Lancaster.

The balance of the project will be paid by grants obtained by the Palmdale Education Foundation.

Last October, the foundation donated $5,000 to help send their telescope education program director to Australia so he could set up the operation.

Clark said he is working with officials at the Queensland University of Technology, who said they are willing to use their engineering department to design a solar power system to power the telescope.

Clark said the district's planetarium director, Jeremy Amarant, will accompany him on the May trip. ``That way when he goes back and teaches teachers how to use it, he'll know what exactly is going on,'' Clark said.

The district had originally planned to lease a telescope in Australia for about $3,000 a year but decided to buy one instead, saying it was more cost-effective in the long run.

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Map: (ran in AV edition only) Palmdale's School District's telescope