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Eric Deutsch
Department of Astronomy, University of Washington
 
MRO Information


This is not the offical MRO page, but just some information regarding it that I make available here.

The Manastash Ridge Observatory (MRO) in central Washington state is owned by the University of Washington. It houses a 0.9 meter (30 inch) telescope which is used primarily by graduate students and some faculty and staff here at UW.

"Everyone talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it."

Some MRO-related Goodies

Guider Acquisition Charts


When taking long exposures with the tbird imager at MRO, it is useful to use the autoguider to keep the telescope steady. I have set up a mechanism for generating Guider Acquisition Charts (GACs) so that the movable stage can be set to the location of the best guide star for a given object.

Local UW Users can just follow the steps in the Local Guide for generating GACs. Users of MRO who do not have access to the local general department unix cluster can submit jobs via a web interface.

The guider FOV is 4 arcminutes and moves anywhere within the plot grid. Choose the best/nearest star and move the guider stage to the centimeters E/W and millimeters N/S indicated on the chart. Do not choose stars inside the dotted circle as the FOV is severely vignetted in that region. Below are two plots which show the vignetting:


Some Random Pictures at MRO


Here's a picture of MRO from a distance, taken by Duncan Foster


Here's a picture of the telescope itself, taken by Duncan Foster

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