Built in 2007, Fresno State’s observatory near Shaver Lake was one of the eight original Sierra Remote Observatories. Now, there are over 30 telescopes and 20 more may be added this year. They belong to astrophotographers, other universities and professional research observatories, NASA and commercial satellite tracking companies.

The observatories are equipped with roll-off roofs. The telescopes are mainly operated by remote control over the internet. Fresno State professor Frederick Ringwald still takes students up to the site to show them how to manually close the observatory if things go wrong.

Observations made by Fresno State’s station appeared in seven papers in peer-reviewed (refereed) journals, including five co-authors who were students and four master’s theses from the Department of Physics.

Fresno State recently installed an allsky meteor camera in collaboration with Dr. Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in Mountain View. The camera covers the entire sky to observe meteors and is part of a network of cameras that cover nearly all of California.

“Cameras like this can tell where in the Solar System these meteors come from, and in exceptional cases, where the meteorites fall,” Ringwald said.