Enhancing and Enlarging the Scientific Impact of the SARA Observatories

在美国，相对较少的小型学院能够为教职员工提供定期使用研究级望远镜进行研究的机会，并让他们的学生获得望远镜操作培训，并进行他们的第一个科学研究项目。然而，美国东南部的一些学校集中了他们的资源，接管了两台望远镜的操作。东南天文研究协会(SARA)在亚利桑那州的基特峰国家天文台和智利的塞罗托洛洛美洲天文台分别运营着一台望远镜。国家光学天文台将北半球的望远镜移交给SARA，并于1993年开始在那里运行。最近，该财团得以收购南半球望远镜，该望远镜计划于2009年夏天投入使用。然而，为了进行富有成效的研究，望远镜需要一些仪器：现代相机可以拍摄高质量的天体照片，光谱仪可以分析恒星发出的光。东田纳西州立大学的理查德·伊甘斯博士正在协调一项工作，以更换旧望远镜上过时和不可靠的仪器，同时为新望远镜配备匹配的仪器。这项研究的资金来自国家科学基金会的主要研究仪器(MRI)计划。新的仪器望远镜将被SARA的教职员工用来进行天文研究，并培训他们的学生使用望远镜和进行研究项目。

Relatively few small colleges in the United States can provide regular access to research grade telescopes for faculty members to conduct research and for their students to gain training with telescope operations and conduct their first scientific research projects. A number of schools in the southeast U.S., however, pooled their resources and have taken over the operation of two telescopes. The Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) operates a telescope on Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and another one on Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The National Optical Astronomy Observatories turned over the northern hemisphere telescope to SARA and operations there began in 1993. More recently, the consortium was able to acquire the southern hemisphere telescope that is scheduled to become operational in summer 2009. In order to do productive research, however, the telescopes require instruments: modern cameras to take high quality pictures of celestial objects and spectrographs to analyze the light from stars. Dr. Richard Igance from East Tennessee State University is coordinating an effort to replace the outmoded and unreliable instruments on the older telescope and to outfit the newer telescope with matching instrumentation at the same time. The funds for this come from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program. The newly instrumented telescopes will be used by SARA faculty members to conduct astronomical research and to train their students to use the telescopes and conduct research projects.