WILLIAMS BAY, Wisconsin— Albert Einstein once said that he'd rather visit the Yerkes Observatory than Niagara Falls. And visiting this historic place, you can understand why.

Back in its heyday, this 113-year-old palace of space science housed one of the best astronomical libraries in the country, the world's largest refracting telescope, and all the astronomy faculty and grad students from the University of Chicago.

But these days, most astronomers would rather be in Chicago. In recent years, the