Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke at Santa Barbara's Granada Theater on May 2, 2013. Before the lecture, Dr. Tyson stopped by Las Cumbres Observatory's headquarters in Goleta. Photographer Kimberly Citro, working with UCSB Arts & Lectures which sponsored the lecture, has kindly shared some of her photos of the event with LCOGT.
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Founder and Cheif Engineer Wayne Rosing describes the global coverage - three to four observatory nodes in both hemispheres, evenly distributed to keep LCOGT telescopes in the dark and out of at least some of the weather.
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Reviewing the on-site 1-meter telescope. There are two to three 1-meters installed at each observatory node to ensure ample observing resources and to cover for any technical downtimes. Current 1-meter installations include 1 at McDonald Observatory in Texas, 3 at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, and 3 at the South Africa Astronomical Observatory (SAAO). Two will be installed this month (May 2013) at Siding Spring in Australia. Additional 1-meter telescopes are planned for the northern hemisphere later this year and in 2014. See the Network section for details.
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Wayne Rosing and Neil deGrasse Tyson; Ben Burleson, Rosing, Tyson, Eric Hawkins, David Petry. And the 1-meter telescope... The 1-meter telescopes expand a network of two 2-meter telescopes (Faulkes Telescope North and South) already in operation. The full network is designed to observe variable events in the night sky including supernovae, exoplanet transits, gamma ray bursts, and near-earth objects.
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Inside the Aqawan enclosure. The Aqawans hold two 0.4-meter telescopes (or other observing instruments) and are planned to support more than 20 of the smaller aperture telescopes across the LCOGT global network. These telescopes are effective for science and LCOGT's education program and are expected to provide up to 50,000 observing hours for students and programs around the world.
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Dr Tyson meets some of the postdoctoral astronomers at LCOGT, Diana Dragomir, Melissa Graham, and Jason Eastman. LCOGT has a staff of four full-time astronomers and several postdocs. See the Science page for more.
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Instrumentation designer Joe Tufts discusses the LCOGT-designed Sinistro camera. The first production model of the camera is nearing test phases.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson embracing the LCOGT global plan!
