Workshops

2015 Workshop

The graduate workshop is held each year in the fall for astronomy students across the UC system to give students hands-on access and training with the resouces and telescopes at Lick Observatory. The 2015 graduate workshop will be held in October.

2014 Rudolph Minkowski Observational Workshop

The workshop was held at Lick Observatory from October 16 - 20, 2014, with twenty students from six different UC campuses attended. All of the students were housed in the on-site dormitories for the duration of the workshop.

Activities at the workshop included an extensive walking tour of the Mount Hamilton site, a talk on the history of Lick Observatory, viewing through the 36-inch refractor, lectures on observatory astronomy techniques (e.g., celestial coordinate systems, CCDs, planning an observing run, near infrared techniques and adaptive optics, data reduction), night sky orientation, and ultimately conducting observing runs and obtaining both spectroscopic and imaging data with the Shane 3-meter, Nickel 1-meter, and Coude Auxiliary telescopes.

Special thanks to Lick support astronomers Dr. Elinor Gates and Dr. Paul Lynam, who put an enormous amount of effort into organizing and conducting this workshop. In addition, we had the support of a remarkable volunteer, Patrick Maloney, who assisted with the operation of the 36-inch refractor and Nickel telescopes.

Our sincere thanks to UC Irvine Professor Virginia Trimble, whose generous financial sponsorship made this event possible.