Editors: This event is closed to the public, but is open to reporters and photographers.
A domed astronomical observatory at the University of Colorado at Boulder聮s 9,500-foot-high Mountain Research Station 35 miles west of Boulder will officially be dedicated on July 7 at 11 a.m.
The new observatory, named the University of Colorado Alpine Observatory, houses an optical telescope with a 12.5-inch mirror purchased with NASA funds in 1998 by CU-Boulder Senior Research Associate Alan Kiplinger for solar studies.
"The University of Colorado Alpine Observatory is a terrific opportunity for the university," said Steve Seibold, assistant director of the Mountain Research Station. "CU students will be able to use it for classes, and we probably will have public outreach sessions about once a month for limited groups of 20 to 30 people.
"The telescope is sophisticated yet simple enough to operate that undergraduates can use it," he said. "On evenings when the public is using the new facility, we probably will set up additional, portable telescopes for use."
Because of the dark nighttime skies at the research station, the telescope聮s imaging quality is equal to the power of a telescope with a mirror at least twice as large located in a light-polluted city, said Kiplinger.
The extremely clear skies at the station even allow viewers to see the dense cloud banks of Jupiter in daylight, Seibold said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute for Standards and Technology donated the observing dome to CU聮s Mountain Research Station to permanently house the telescope. The 1-ton dome was moved last fall with the help of the 244th Engineering Battalion U.S. Army Reserve Unit of Boulder and NIST.
The battalion previously donated time and effort to the research station in 1997 by digging a trench and laying a fiber-optics line and high-voltage power line to the station聮s 11,565-foot-high tundra lab. The work by the battalion has allowed for year-round research in an environment where the wind can blow at 160 miles per hour and the wind chill can drop temperatures to 70 degrees below zero.
"This is a terrific example of cooperation between CU, federal agencies and the U.S. Army Reserve," said Kiplinger, a solar astrophysicist in the atmospheric and planetary sciences department who coordinated the dome acquisition effort. "The domed telescope will now be much more accessible to students and the public."
The telescope is equipped with three computers and has a memory bank that includes the location of thousands of stars, said Kiplinger. "If you tell the two computers where one star is, they automatically know the location of 65,000 other stars. If you activate the third computer, it knows much more."
Constructed by Ash Manufacturing Co. of Plainville, Ill., the dome was sold to NOAA more than 30 years ago. Kiplinger and the Mountain Research Station staff rewired the dome with new switches and wires with the help of expertise provided by Ash Manufacturing Co. President Richard Olsen.
The Mountain Research Station is administered by CU-Boulder聮s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.