“The Twins” getting set for an evening of dancing with the stars.
The StarFarm Observatory is a small privately-owned astronomical observatory located under the woefully polluted grungy orange skies of Baltimore, Maryland. Established in 2006 the observatory is comprised of two domed buildings, each of which houses an essentially identical Celestron 14-inch telescope. On those seemingly diminishing numbers of clear nights the telescopes are used to gather data for a variety of research projects. Foremost among those is time-series photometry of cataclysmic variable stars, most frequently in concert with the Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA), a world-wide collaboration of amateur and professional astronomers working in concert with Dr. Joseph Patterson at Columbia University. Ground-based support data have also been acquired at the request of astronomers using space-based observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
This website is in it’s formative stages and I’m still learning about WordPress and deciding exactly how to organize everything. Therefore exactly where any given bit of content is to be found may change from time-to-time. The “Articles/Papers” tab will take you various “white paper” type write-ups as well as observation results. The “Gear” tab will take you to pages describing the equipment and instrumentation available at The StarFarm. The “Data Reduction/Analysis” tab will take you to descriptions and comments about the software and techniques used for data calibration and reduction. Finally, the “Posts” tab takes you to my astronomy blog where you can keep tabs on what is currently going on at The StarFarm. Comments and conversation are welcome so don’t be shy!
