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Over the past several months I
have indicated in both my president's letters and
at club meetings that the Kuhn 22" club telescope
has been put into working condition and is now available
for use by club Star Members. It has been an exhausting
but gratifying process to reach this point. However,
as Lao-tzu said a few years ago "a journey
of a thousand miles must begin with a single step".
The more we work with the Kuhn the more we realize
that full dependable functionally is a journey that
has some distance to go. We have taken more than
the first step but our destination is not just around
the corner. Here are the details.
When I became President of OCA,
the board and I asked Bob Gill to serve as telescope
custodian and to conduct a survey of the telescope
and observatory. We wanted to know what was needed
to bring the building and instrument into fully
functional use by any and all Star Members (remember
that to operate the club telescope you must become
a Star Member which involves training and the payment
of a one time fee to help maintain the telescope).
Bob's initial survey identified a number of problems
with the telescope both in its physical operation
and in the software and firmware for controlling
the telescope. A technical support group consisting
of John Hoot, Minor White, and myself was formed
to work under Bob Gill to affect the repairs and
improvements needed to get the telescope operational.
Additionally Bob oversaw a general cleaning up of
the observatory.
As of the beginning of July the
telescope has been restored to good working order
for visual work. This involved work on the telescope
itself as well as significant work with the software/hardware
interface. At the beginning of July, our Star Member
Trainer, Chuck Lodoza was brought up to speed on
the changes and is now in the process of retraining
Star Members on the new system. Once a Star Member
is retrained he/she will receive the new passwords
to enter the observatory and access the telescope's
computer interface. If you are a Star Member and
have not been retrained then please contact Chuck
Lodoza or Bob Gill as soon as possible. We need
Star Members to step up and retrain as we are getting
increased requests for use of the telescope by local
educational groups. Our Star Members are an essential
link between the public and astronomy education
at our Anza Observing Site. We depend on our Star
Members to fulfill this important educational role.
As I said, this is a journey, and we have a long
way to go. While the telescope works well visually,
there is still much to be done to make the telescope
a dependable research instrument. Anyone using the
Kuhn for research in the past has had to spend a
significant amount of his/her time getting the telescope
to function, much less acquire usable data. As you
well know, Myke Collins and Minor White have been
using the telescope in the ASROC program of asteroid
discovery, but they have had to fight problems with
the telescope that has reduced their potential discovery
rate. We are moving forcefully to deal with those
problems.
The technical support group, spearheaded
by the Herculean-like efforts of John Hoot, has
the goal of making the Kuhn telescope a "world
class" research instrument that any OCA member
with a good observing program can use to do significant
research. Our goal is that his/her task and challenge
is the research itself, not telescope repair and
maintenance.
Next month I will detail the work
that is being done to reach this goal.
"The goodness of the night
upon you"
Othello Act 1 Scene 2
Russell Sipe
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