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The Sierra Stars Observatory is an education and research facility
and a business venture.
Our facility includes a research grade 0.61-meter Cassegrain telescope and high-precision
CCD imaging instruments housed in a dome building located at a dark sky site on
the east side of the Sierra Mountains in Alpine County California. The telescope,
instruments, dome and other parts of the observatory are fully integrated into an
automated system. Our clients can schedule images to be taken during a given
night's observing run using a web browser from anywhere on the Internet.
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Automated/Robotic Operation
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Sierra Stars Observatory is an automated robotic facility. By this we mean that the observatory
- telescope, camera, filter wheel, dome, scheduling and so on run automatically
without a human attendant required to operate the entire complex system through
an observing run. Our system
is the culmination of more than a decade of research and development by Optical
Mechanics, several universities and research organizations around the world, and
the contributions of numerous individuals. Literally several thousands of man hours
of work were dedicated to creating the state-of-the-art robotic system that comprises the Sierra
Stars Observatory.
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No highly complex robotic system is completely autonomous. Things sometimes go wrong.
Environmental factors and component malfunctions can cause the system
to fail. Even the Hubble Space Telescope breaks down and requires human intervention
to fix problems from time to time. The Sierra Stars Observatory is located on Rich Williams' ranch
within a few hundred yards of his house. In the event of any emergency or problem,
he or another observatory administrator are there on site to immediately address
and fix problems to ensure that your observatory is fully functional for your use.
For a detailed description of the operation of the Sierra Stars Observatory, see
our How the Sierra Stars Observatory Works page.
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Location/Environment
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The Sierra Stars Observatory is located in the south end of the Carson Valley in Alpine County California
about two miles from the Nevada state line. The latitude and longitude coordinates are +38 48' 39" N and 119
46' 30" W. The elevation of the observatory is 5,070 feet MSL.
The semi-desert climate provides over 270 clear nights (and sunny days) per year
with low relative humidity. During the summer months, high temperatures average
around 90 F; during the winter highs average around 45 F. Average annual rainfall is approximately
11 inches and average annual snowfall is 22 inches.
The sky at the observatory site is very dark with a small amount of light
pollution limited to directly north towards Carson City and Minden/Gardnerville in Nevada.
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Instruments
Telescope
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The observatory's core instrument is a 0.61-meter (24-inch) F/10 Optical Mechanics
Nighthawk CC06 telescope. The Nighthawk CC06 is a high-precision automated/robotic
telescope with superb Classical Cassegrain optics fabricated by OMI's president
James Mulherin.
The observatory control software is Talon, a Linux-based system
developed over 10 years by OMI and now available as Open Source code for custom
development. Talon controls the entire observatory system (telescope, CCD camera,
filter wheel, dome, and so on) for automated and direct control, locally and remotely.
For a detailed description
and specifications of the telescope and Talon see the Optical Mechanics, Inc. web
site (www.opticalmechanics.com).
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CCD Camera
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The primary imaging instrument is a Finger
Lakes Instrumentation ProLine camera. This is a state of the art research-grade
CCD camera with triple-stage cooling and capable of maintaining stable temperatures
to -65C below the ambient temperature. The camera contains a Kodak KAF-09000 3056
x 3056 pixel CCD chip with 12-micron
pixels giving an image scale of 0.41 arc seconds/pixel
un-binned and 0.82 arc seconds/pixel binned 2 x 2. The area of the chip is greater
than a 35mm format camera providing a field of view of 21 x 21 arc minutes. The KAF-09000
chip has a high quantum efficiency (69% peak).
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Filter Wheel and Filters
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Our Finger Lakes Instrumentation ProLine CFW-4-5 filter wheel is designed to integrate
with our ProLine camera. The filter wheel holds four scientific-grade Astrodon SCHÜLER Johnsons-Cousins 50mm square filters for photometry and
tri-color imaging. Our standard (default) filter wheel holds B-V-R-I (Blue, Visual [Green], Red, and Infrared)
photometric filters and a "clear" opening without a filter. Additional filter wheels
and filters will be added in the future and clients with special filter needs can
make arrangements for using their own filters.
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Dome Building
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The observatory building has two rooms - the dome room (which contains the telescope)
and a control room. The dome room houses a 15-foot Technical Innovations Pro-Dome
modified with custom hardware, electronics and software to integrate with Talon for automated
operation with the telescope.
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SSO People
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Rich Williams
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Rich has a lifelong passion for doing astronomy. In 1996 he worked
with the people at Torus Precision Optics to develop an automated/robotic telescope
system while working for Microsoft. His telescope and the Torus Observatory became
the prototype for the company's advanced
telescope technology.
In 1997 Rich
left Microsoft to form Torus Technologies with James and Tony Mulherin from Torus
Precision Optics. As the Vice President of Marketing and Product Development Rich
worked with astronomers around the
world on various projects and contributed photometry
and astrometry data when needed from his observatory in Buckley, WA.
He has presented papers on telescope technology at professional astronomy conferences
and meetings around the world.
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In 2002 Torus Technologies was restructured to Optical Mechanics,
Inc. Rich is a partner in OMI but no longer work in the day to day operation of
the company. He moved to Markleeville, CA in
2001 and built the Sierra Stars Observatory.
Rich is an avid trout fisherman seeking out the best trophy trout
streams and rivers on the east side of the Sierras every chance he gets. The Sierra
Stars Observatory is located on the West Fork of the Carson River so he doesn't have to go far to
practice.
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Steve Ohmert
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Kathleen Fox-Williams
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Contact Information:
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| Phone: |
775-781-5700 |
| Email: |
Rich Williams: richw@sierrastars.com
Customer Service: helpme@sierrastars.com
Information and Press: info@sierrastars.com
SSO Grant program: ssogrant@sierrastars.com
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