01.01.70
The sun has sunk below the Flagstaff limits, and for most of
the city's residents, that means the work day is coming to an end.
Brian Skiff is fitting getting started.
Skiff is preparing to study the suns of the nighttime sky.
In the irascible confines of the 42-inch John S. Hall Telescope
supervision room atop Anderson Mesa, he configures the massive
gismo by taking initial images to ensure its camera will
collect spot on target data.
Since 1976, Skiff has worked as a research assistant at Lowell
Observatory, and much of that beforehand has been devoted to a single
project: studying sun-like stars to see if they go through cycles
equivalent to our own. His job is to operate the observatory's
telescopes and collect data for Lowell astronomers.
In his thin time, he hunts and studies asteroids.
The arrangement is unique in the crowd of modern astronomy,
where projects are typically short-lived and observers hardly ever have
more than a few nights a year of telescope time.
Source: Arizona Daily Sun