Calvin-Rehoboth Robotic Twin Telescopes

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Astronomy (11)This project is adapting and implementing a model of complementary telescopes--one local and one remote--pioneered at the University of Iowa. The investigators are installing a pair of 16-inch telescopes, one at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where observing is sometimes hampered by poor weather and light pollution, and one at the Rehoboth Christian School near Gallup, New Mexico, a remote location with clearer and darker skies. The choice of the remote site builds on a century-old relationship between the college and the high school, which serves primarily Navajo and Zuni students. A teacher at the school is assisting with the installation and maintenance of the telescope there and is integrating it into the school's physical science curriculum.Students and faculty at Calvin College use their local telescope in a hands-on and a training mode, and use the nearly identical, robotic telescope at Rehoboth Christian School to make observations remotely. Both telescopes provide individual data for many students, including research-quality data for upper-level undergraduates.This arrangement provides a flexible but reliable system, in which the local telescope at the college can be switched between eyepiece, camera, and spectroscopic modes, and in which skills gained by students using the local telescope immediately transfer to data acquisition on the remote telescope in New Mexico. Efficient queue operation of the remote telescope supplies large quantities of high-quality data, enough for individual students to pursue a wide range of physically interesting experiments with their own data sets.Outcomes of the project include sequential installation and reliable operation of the local, and then the remote, telescope; training in the new equipment and procedures for Calvin College faculty who teach astronomy courses, as well as their student assistants; training in the new equipment and assistance in curriculum development for the participating teacher at Rehoboth Christian School; integration of new observing capabilities into the college's lab curriculum and existing and newly developed courses; enhanced recruitment of Native American students (at Rehoboth Christian School) into careers in science; conference presentations that disseminate the college's model for astronomy labs; and the development of relationships with the college's "feeder" high schools (in addition to Rehoboth Christian School), so that they can incorporate use of the new telescope in their science curricula.