The Carl Sagan Observatory: A Telescope for Everyone

The Carl Sagan Observatory is a new project for a remote observatory that will be built at the summit of Cerro Azul (a 2480 m mountain located near Magdalena. Sonora, Mexico). It will include one 55 cm and four 14 cm telescopes. The 55 cm telescope will be dedicated to supernovae research. One of the 14 cm Maksutov telescopes will be used as an autoguider for the stellar observations. The other 14 cm telescopes will feature different narrow band filters that will be used for solar research. The observatory will be controlled from the campus of the U niversidad de Sonora in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico ( ~ 200 km from the site). A prototype of the observatory building has been built on campus and first light is expected by the end of May of 2001. We expect to have an operating mountain observatory by the end of 2002. Some of the unique technical aspects of this observatory, which we believe can be a model for future small telescope observatories are discussed in this work