University of Washington's Manastash Ridge Observatory: 40 Years of Astronomy Research and Education

The University of Washington's Manastash Ridge Observatory (UW MRO) will celebrate the 40^th anniversary of its dedication in May 2012. The MRO Boller and Chivens 0.75-m telescope was installed in 1972, following two years of site surveys in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. The observatory was used initially for research by UW faculty, as well as for graduate research and training, and during the 1970's and 1980's many of the UW's astronomy PhD theses relied heavily on data obtained at MRO. In recent years MRO has shifted its mission to enabling undergraduate research, and to providing a "capstone” course in advanced photometric methods for our undergraduate majors. Photometry has long been the major source of data from MRO, and the Washington Photometry system for measuring stellar abundances was developed at UW and first deployed at MRO. The cameras at MRO have been used to research a wide variety of objects: cataclysmic variables, RR Lyrae stars, symbiotic stars, novae, X-ray binaries, white dwarfs, M dwarfs, asteroids, comets, star clusters, and many others. Over 100 papers based all or in part upon data obtained at MRO data have appeared in refereed publications. Our poster will present highlights of the research and stories from MRO's history.