The result was the construction a new $40,000 (equivalent to $885,070 in 2023) observatory on the university campus, funded by Mrs. Cronyn, and named in honour of her late husband.

[1][3] The brass refractor telescope, finders, German equatorial mount, and pier were purchased from Perkin Elmer Corporation of New York for the sum of $7500 CDN.

[2][3] When the large refractor was shipped to Canada, Perkin Elmer included the Schmidt camera at no extra charge, even though it was apparently not originally ordered.

He may well have had his hands on this particular instrument while he was a junior fellow at Harvard University at the time Perkin Elmer was founded in 1937 incorporated in Dec. 1939) This telescope was purchased by William H. Wehlau in 1958 and was installed onto the refractor for the purpose of extending the photometric capabilities of the observatory.

In 1906 astronomer and engineer George James Gibbs applied for a patent for what he called a "Universal Equinoctial Mean Time Heliochronometer", basically a fancy sundial.

Building renovations of 1996 resulted in the replacement of the main floor foyer and two offices with a modern classroom that can seat approximately 70 people.

His 1964 paper with Kam-Ching Leung (ApJ 139, 843)[7] on the multiple periods of Delta Delphini was the first published use of Fourier integral techniques to interpret stellar light curves.

The quality and quantity of data (25 nights of three-colour photometry) and sophistication of the fit (a sum of 6 cosines) would not be out of place in the modern literature on asteroseismology of Delta Scuti variables (see his paper in these Proceedings).

In the next decade, Bill again was a pioneer; this time in stellar surface imaging through inversion of spectral line-profile variations into abundance and temperature maps of Ap stars.

[11] This combination of instruments was also used in the published search for variability in the stars Gamma Equulei and HD 149728, using 1958 and 1959 data from the refracting telescope.

The ground breaking work was the paper "The Multiple Periodicity of Delta Delphinii", Ap.J., Vol.139,April 1964, co-authored with graduate student Kam-Ching Leung.

Since its inception, Cronyn Observatory has held "public nights" for the community members, normally running every Saturday evening throughout the summer and currently also running twice a month throughout winter..[14] Large groups can also book a day or evening visit through the "Exploring the Stars Program",[15] and finally private events for small groups are also available[16]