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

该奖项由2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)资助。一位慷慨的捐赠者向北卡罗来纳州布恩市的阿巴拉契亚州立大学提供了一台新的17英寸望远镜，供捐赠者和亚利桑那州立大学联合使用。该望远镜将被安置在该大学“黑暗天空天文台”(DSO)现有的一个圆顶上，距离布恩约20英里，海拔超过3000英尺。该望远镜将加入其他三个已经在DSO运行的望远镜，其安装费用将得到NSF天文科学部主要研究仪器项目的奖励。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主要研究人员。这笔资金还将用于完全自动化这台和其他DSO望远镜，以便它们可以通过互联网进行远程操作，无论是从亚利桑那州立大学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，并开展变星、类星体和活动星系核可变性、伽马射线暴后续观测以及双星小行星研究等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.