WHO ARE WE?

The Dream.

Tenagra Observatories is a vision that has finally come to be.  The astronomical community has always dreamed of automated and robotic telescopes doing the work that people cannot.  Many, many applications require automation:  times series of variable stars, NEO searches, supernovae searches and many long term photometric studies.  Huge amounts of very valuable data with many different research objectives can be gathered nightly.

Tenagra Observatories, Ltd. is the realization of that dream.

Sometimes it was (is) a nightmare.  Getting telescopes to point accurately and track without guide stars is a formidable task not even sufficiently solved at most professional sites.  Other problems include maintaining focus in temperature sensitive instruments, structures that can closed if rain is detected, and making domes turn 300 times a night without falling apart and finding CCD cameras that can withstand the rigors of up to 1,000 exposures per night.  Tenagra Observatories has solved these problems on the small telescope scale, from the 0.36-m (14") telescopes in Oregon, USA, Perth, Australia and Oslo, Norway to the 0.81-m (32") in Arizona.  It hasn't been easy.

But we expected to run into many problems.  While the first implementations of automated observatories were not yesterday, we have strived to combine emerging off-the-shelf technology rather than gaining a single telescope, write unique software for it ("studentware") and paint ourselves into a corner.  The results are impressive.  All Tenagra telescopes run the same operating system and scheduler.  This is immensely important for the gathering of huge amounts of data.  Objects intended for one telescope can easily be assigned to another.

Tenagra has observatories in Oregon and Arizona, USA, Perth, W. Australia and Oslo, Norway.  We will continue to do "firsts" and expand automated observing programs to a level not known in the professional or amateur  world of Astronomy.

We would also like to see Tenagra become an international consortium where telescope time can be provide to researchers world-wide.  A 0.36-m (14") telescope under good seeing easily reaches 20th magnitude unfiltered.  This is a formidable research instrument at a good location.  We would like to provide telescope telescope time, sometimes at a cost, to researchers world-wide.  We want to become a cross roads for international research.

The Tenagra Name.

The name "Tenagra" was used in the Star Trek Next Generation episode "Darmok".  No, we don't run about the observatories wearing Spock ears.  But so many of the Star Trek episodes had meaningful points to make, as well as showing a possible future where humanity can do a little better than it is doing now.  Tenagra was a mythical place where two enemies, Darmok and Jilad, gave up their mutual antagonism and defeated a common enemy on the island of Tenagra.  This was an exploration of how far people can go in the spirit of cooperation.  We are seeking this same kind of cooperation and development of common language in the world of observational astronomy, the dream spoken about above.

Michael Schwartz, Director.

Michael Schwartz is the dreamer of the dream.  He was an avid amateur as a teenager during the late '50s and '60s.  In 1968 he went to Northwestern University (Evanston, IL, USA) in order to take a degree in Astronomy.  He emerged in 1972 with a BA in Archeology.  Those were interesting and turbulent times.  None-the-less he worked extensively with the 1.0-m (40") Boller & Chivens telescope at the now demolished Lindheimer observatory.  He was exposed to the power of image intensification devices as Northwestern was a leading user of image orthicons.  In addition, Michael learned to program computers on the then brand new CDC 6400 scientific mainframe (now melted down for its gold).

After some wandering on both sides of the Atlantic, Michael found himself in Hawaii and rather than surf his life away started his undergraduate studies at square one as a first year Physics student at the U. of Hawaii.  He finished a BA in Physics at U. of California, Santa Cruz in 1976, home of the administrative offices of Lick Observatory although he did no astronomical research at the time.

Then he went to graduate school in Astronomy?  No.  He entered U. of California, Berkeley in 1978 as a graduate student in Physical Anthropology with a specialty in human evolution.  Why?  Why not?  Here he specialized in multidimensional statistics for the comparison and taxonomic classification of fossils hopefully eliminating the bias of human choices when measuring and comparing bones and fossils.

So, he then got his PhD from Berkeley and went on to teach and do research?  No.  He quit after his masters degree in 1980.  Why?  Too much of a life within academia.  It was now time for something completely different.  He started a computer software business in 1981, Prime Factors, Inc. (www.primefactors.com) that specialized in providing data encryption and compatible information security technology to major banks and credit card issuers.  After the usual fits, starts, setbacks and forward lurches the business took hold in the late 80s and its systems probably protect your PIN number when you go to an ATM or when your bank transfers money from one place to another.

By 1996 Michael found that his life as CEO and President of Prime Factors, Inc.  was getting redundant.  All he did was have long conversations with lawyers and became an unwilling specialist in contract law.  The day-to-day operation of the company had been assumed by others.  On April 1, 1997 Michael was fired from his job as arranged by agreement with the large company that bought Prime Factors, Inc.  Free at last.

Now it was time to return to his intellectual roots:  Astronomy, but with much more pocket change.  The very first reasonable automated telescope mounts and the ever important first commercial CCD cameras were readily available.  The optics were always available.  Now, how can we make this new and beautiful combination take data while he could sleep?  Michael expects to spend the better part of the first decade of this millennium developing automated telescope use to new and unprecedented heights.

Michael also writes fiction, essays and scathing critiques of science and society, virtually all of it under a pseudonym.  Other interests include music performance and book collecting.

He can be reached at mbs@tenagraobservatories.com or the contact information given in this web presentation.

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