Ritter Observatory

View of Ritter from Bancroft Street taken by E. Hesselbach

A research observatory in an urban environment, Ritter Observatory has a 1-meter telescope with two fiber-fed spectrographs for stellar spectroscopy. As of 2013, it is also being used part time with the HPOL spectropolarimeter, which was originally developed by the University of Wisconsin. Ritter's mission includes

Research: long-term monitoring of variable stars that have winds, circumstellar disks, or active envelopes, with occasional forays into spectroscopy of bright solar system objects
Access by the professional astronomical community, formerly with support by the National Science Foundation Program for Research and Education with Small Telescopes (PREST)
Instruction
Public outreach: public observing on the first Friday of every month and on special occasions, offered through Ritter Planetarium and Brooks Observatory. Our introductory poster, located in the 5th floor lobby, is reproduced here (PDF, 128 KB). For the full-sized version (PDF, 6.8 MB), click here.

Information for observers

News: On July 29, 2008, Ritter Observatory was the subject of a full-length article in the science pages of the Columbus Dispatch.

At the end of December 2006, we received our new Spectral Instruments 600 Series camera, with a 4K X 4K CCD (at right).

This camera is now installed and fully operational on the échelle spectrograph.

More information is available here.

A colorized version of a spectrum of Deneb obtained with the new camera can be viewed here.

Observing

Telescope and instrumentation - page under construction
Usage: the telescope is used on essentially every spectroscopically usable night by a team that, as of this writing, consists of a graduate student, a postdoc, an undergraduate, a faculty member, and several undergraduate and graduate student trainees.
Observing schedule with Clear Sky Clock
Operational status as of June 8, 2010: An 850 Series CCD camera with a 2k X 512 CCD for the Low-Dispersion Spectrograph from Spectral Instruments (Tucson, AZ) hasa been purchased with the last remaining funds from our NSF-PREST grant, which expired on August 31, 2009. The new camera has a water-assisted thermoelectric cooling system. Preliminary testing is complete, the camera is in full operation, and requests for service observations are welcome.
The échelle spectrograph continues in good operational status.

Spectra

List of publications, reports, theses, and abstracts

Staff

Director: Jon Bjorkman
Graduate Research Assistants: Jesica Trucks and Kevin Hardegree-Ullman
Observatory Technician: Mike Brown

Document custodian: Nancy Morrison, who retired as director effective June 1, 2010.

Page last updated: April 16, 2019