A domed astronomical observatory should be in place at the University of Colorado at Boulder聮s 9,500 foot-elevation Mountain Research Station by early October as a result of a cooperative effort involving four Boulder groups.
An optical telescope with a 12.5-inch mirror, purchased with NASA funds in 1998 by CU-Boulder Senior Research Associate Alan Kiplinger for solar studies, also has been used periodically at the station for general viewing by students and the public since its acquisition. But the 100-pound telescope -- powerful enough to see the dense cloud banks of Jupiter in daylight -- has to be hand-carried from the station and bolted to an outdoor cement pier for each viewing session, then unbolted and returned to the station to avoid weather damage.
Fortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has agreed to donate an observing dome, now sitting atop a roof at the National Institute of Standards and Technology聮s Boulder complex, to the Mountain Research Station to permanently house the telescope. The dome presently houses a solar telescope, which will be moved to the new NOAA facility on South Broadway.
The 12.5 foot-diameter dome and eight-foot high cylindrical housing will be lifted off the NIST facility by crane onto a flatbed truck late in the morning of Sept. 16 with the help of the 244th Engineering Battalion U.S. Army Reserve Unit of Boulder.
The one-ton dome will be stored at the U. S. Army Reserve facility in Boulder until early October, when it will be trucked to the Mountain Research Station, lifted off by a U.S. Army Reserve crane and bolted onto a cement foundation several hundred feet from the station. The Mountain Research Station is administered by CU-Boulder聮s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
The battalion previously donated time and effort to the research station in 1997 by digging a trench and laying a fiber optics line and high voltage power line to the station聮s 11,565 foot-elevation tundra lab. The work by the battalion has allowed for year-round research in an environment where the wind can blow at 160 miles per hour and the wind chill can drop temperatures to 70 degrees below zero.
"This is a terrific example of cooperation between CU, federal agencies and the U.S. Army Reserve," said Kiplinger, a solar astrophysicist in the atmospheric and planetary sciences department who coordinated the dome acquisition effort. "The domed telescope will be much more accessible to students and the public."
Once the dome and telescope are in place on the cement foundation at the station, it officially will become the "University of Colorado Alpine Observatory," said Steve Seibold, assistant director of the station. "This is a terrific opportunity for the university," he said. "CU students will be able to use it for classes, and we probably will have public outreach sessions about once a month for limited groups of 20 to 30 people."
Because of the dark skies at the research station, the imaging quality of the telescope is equal to the power of a telescope with a mirror twice as large that is located in a city flooded by light pollution, said Kiplinger. He has equipped the telescope with a CCD camera to enhance the viewing of deep space objects including galaxies and distant stars.
"The telescope is simple enough to operate that undergraduates can use it," he said. "On evenings when students or the public are using the new facility, we probably will set up additional, portable telescopes for use."
The telescope is equipped with two computers and has a memory bank that includes the location of thousands of stars, said Kiplinger. "If you tell the computers where one star is, it automatically knows the location of 65,000 other stars."
Constructed by Ash Manufacturing Co. of Plainville, Ill., The Ash Dome was sold to NOAA over 20 years ago. Kiplinger rewired the dome with new switches, wires and expertise provided by Ash Manufacturing Co. President Richard Olsen.
Earlier this year Kiplinger made national news by successfully spearheading the search for a lost NASA satellite that was in orbit around the sun. With the help of the Arecebo Radio Telescope astronomers in Puerto Rico, radar signals were fired to a point in space millions of miles away where Kiplinger had calculated the spacecraft should be. The radar signals bounced off the SOHO satellite, providing NASA with its location, and contact was eventually re-established with the craft.