MRI-R^2 : Acquisition of Equipment in Support of Automatic Telescope Systems at a Research and Teaching Observatory

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的一个慷慨的捐助者正在提供阿巴拉契亚州立大学布恩，北卡罗来纳州与一个新的17英寸望远镜将由捐助者和亚利桑那州立大学共同使用。 该望远镜将被安置在该大学的“黑暗天空天文台”（DSO）的一个现有圆顶中，该天文台位于距离布恩约20英里的海拔3,000多英尺处。 这台望远镜将加入已经在DSO运行的另外三台望远镜，其安装成本将得到NSF天文科学部主要研究仪器计划的资助。亚利桑那州立大学天文学教授、DSO主任丹尼尔卡顿博士是该奖项的首席研究员。 这笔资金还将用于使该望远镜和其他DSO望远镜完全自动化，以便它们可以通过互联网远程操作，无论是从ASU校园还是从其他地点。 这些望远镜将用于培训学生进行观测天文学的学习，并在变星、类星体和活动星系核的变化、伽马射线暴的后续观测以及对双小行星的研究等方面开展正在进行的研究计划。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)A generous donor is providing Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina with a new 17-inch telescope to be used jointly by the donor and ASU. The telescope will be housed in an existing dome at the university's "Dark Sky Observatory" (DSO) located at an elevation of over 3,000 feet about 20 miles from Boone. This telescope will join three others already operating at DSO and the costs for its installation will be aided by an award from NSF's Major Research Instrumentation program from the Division of Astronomical Sciences. Dr. Daniel Caton, a professor of astronomy at ASU and director of the DSO, is the principal investigator for the award. The funding will also be used to fully automate this and other DSO telescopes so that they can be operated remotely over the internet, either from the ASU campus or from other locations. The telescopes will be used to train students in observational astronomy and to carry out on-going research program in variable stars, Quasar and Active Galactic Nuclei variability, Gamma Ray Burst follow-up observations, and studies of binary asteroids.