Rutherfurd Observatory

Facilities and Equipment

The Rutherfurd Observatory consists of two domes (Big and Little, we call 'em like we see 'em) and a storage room known as the Transit Room. Keys to the roof and observatories are kept by Jana, Millie, and the head observing TA. NOTE: the roof key and the observatory keys are not the same.

The Big Dome telescope is a 14" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain.

The Little Dome telescope is an 11" Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain.

The department owns the following additional equipment:

Qty		Type		Description		Location		Owner
2		Telescope		6" Dob		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Telescope		12" Dob		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Telescope		8" Celestron		Transit Room		Joe
1		Telescope		11" Celestron		Transit Room		Joe
1		Telescope		16" Meade		Big Dome		Joe
3		Telescope		6" Celestron		Transit Room		RV

Eyepieces:

Qty		Brand		Size		Location		Owner
1		Orion		6mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Celestron		7mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Brandon		8mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Meade		9mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Televue		9mm		Grad Student Office		Labs
3		Orion		10mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Celestron		12mm		Grad Student Office		Labs
1		?		12.5mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Televue		19mm		Grad Student Office		Labs
1		K20		20mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Brandon		24mm		Transit Room		Outreach
3		Celectron		25mm		Transit Room		RV
1		Meade		26mm		Transit Room		Outreach
1		Televue		27mm		Grad Student Office		Labs
1		Televue		35mm		Grad Student Office		Labs
2		Celestron		40mm		Grad Student Office		Labs

Binoculars are stored in one of the metal cabinets: 3x Celestron + 3x Orion.

Telescope Status

If there is any change in the working status of the Big Dome, Little Dome, or Dobsonian Telescopes, please alert Summer Ash immediately.

Current Status (excellent, good, okay, poor, bad):

Big Dome		Under Construction
Little Dome		Okay
6" Dob 1		Good
6" Dob 2		Okay
12" Dob		Good

Observatory Manual

See attached documents below for the written procedures for operation, maintenance, and care of the telescopes and domes on the roof of Pupin Hall. Hard copies of these procedures are also available on the roof near the relevant telescope and in the manual in the transit room. Please be familiar with these procedures before going to the roof.

Background Information (useful for roof tours)

• Rutherfurd Observatory was named for Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, a wealthy lawyer who was an amateur astronomer and one of the first astrophotographers (a rather expensive hobby in the mid-nineteenth century). His observatory was initially in the Stuyvesant estate on the Lower East Side, but he became associated with Columbia University (then around Rockefeller Center) as he and natural philosophers at Columbia shared a common interest in astronomical spectroscopy.
• From 1906, approximately two decades before Pupin was built, telescopes were kept in the Wilde Observatory's dome and "transit building" where the Interdisciplinary Science Building now stands (an area formerly known as "The Grove"; see picture here: ​http://www.wikicu.com/File:WildeObservatory.png ). Transit observations were considered one of the most important aspects of astronomy even into the twentieth century for both time-keeping and navigation (Naval Observatories would announce the precise moment the sun crossed the meridian so that ships in the harbor could set their clocks in order to allow for accurate determination of longitude on the high seas). The current observatory still has a "transit room" with a slit oriented precisely north-to-south to aid in such observations.
• Pupin Physics Laboratory was completed in 1927.
• A twelve inch (30 cm.) refractor telescope built by the Alvan Clark firm in 1916 for the Czarist government of Russia was to be installed in Crimea to observe an upcoming solar eclipse and verify Einstein's theory of relativity. With unrestricted U-boat warfare during World War I shipment was delayed until the war ended. The new Russian government headed by Lenin refused to pay for or accept the telescope, which sat in a crate in a warehouse until 1920, when Columbia bought it. Upon the completion of Pupin Hall, it was located to the big dome which was built especially to house that telescope. The telescope was sold in 1997 to South Carolina State Museum that specializes in the upkeep of the old Alvan Clark refractors: ​http://scmuseum.org/explore/observatory/
• In the 1970s, the "Columbia CO Survey" built a 1.2 meter radio telescope that operated out of the Little Dome and was the first to map the sky in this important radio band. See a picture of this at ​http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mmw/mini_NY_210.jpg
• Rutherfurd Observatory has been in continuous operation since Pupin was constructed, but in 2009 a new "Northwest Corner Building" was erected next to it, six floors higher than the roof of Pupin and blocking a significant portion of its field of view, and putting out a considerable amount of light, interfering with observations in the remaining sky.
• Below the Rutherfurd Observatory on the 14th floor was the site of Professor Wallace Eckert's Astronomical Laboratory, in which he constructed the first device to perform general scientific calculations automatically in 1933-34 by connecting IBM punch card tabulating machines together, arguably inventing punch card programming. Eckert's expertise in this computational device was the reason he was appointed as director of the United States Naval Observatory at the beginning of World War II. His Columbia Astronomy Department replacement was refugee from Europe, Martin Schwarzschild (son of Karl Schwarzschild and later chair of the Princeton Astrophysics Department), who himself enlisted in the US Army and was eventually promoted to be an officer in the Army Intelligence Corps. After the war, Eckert returned to Columbia to head the newly-named Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory that worked in close cooperation with IBM. In 1957, Eckert's laboratory finally left Pupin Hall to the new campus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York, still the headquarters for the IBM research division.
• Pupin Hall is also where Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and other physicists began work on developing a self-sustaining neutron chain reaction in 1939, in the basement. When Fermi's work moved to the University of Chicago after Pearl Harbor so it would be safer from attack from the sea, it was called the Manhattan Project because of where it had begun, and it kept its name when it moved later to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Here is an article from the NYT describing the Manhattan roots of the Manhattan project: ​http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30manh.html?pagewanted=1.

Roof Maintenance and Improvement To Do

• Install additional foam and glow tape on overhead door area in big dome
• Improve protection for metal pieces next to door from roof
• Glow Tape for big dome stairs
• Improve signs for big dome re: sticking points
• Storage for solar filter
• Laminated checklists/manuals to avoid moisture damage
• Fix light in between transit room and big dome entrance
• Remove old equipment from little dome, big dome, and transit room
• Further organize transit room

Roof Training Outline

• Show where eyepieces & keys are kept
  • Must have permission to access roof and eyepieces, must sign out keys & eyepieces
• General roof access, safety, procedures
  • Keys and access
  • Managing crowds on the roof
  • Walking safety, protruding objects
  • Ice and weather concerns
• Planning your observing
  • Checking weather
  • Rain Dates
  • Choosing objects to observe using sky maps
  • Consideration of light pollution and horizon limitations
• Roof tour & short history
• Big Dome Procedure walkthrough (currently Under Construction)
• Little Dome Procedure walkthrough
• Dobsonian Procedures walkthrough