This is the website of Robert Martin Ayers. It includes both the "Robert Martin Ayers Sciences Fund" and the personal webpage of the proprietor, Robert Ayers.
I, the proprietor and manager of the Sciences Fund, graduated from Harvard in 1962 with a degree in astronomy. I went into aerospace and the then-new field of computer science -- first with General Electric's "Missiles and Space" division, later with Xerox Corp (ex-SDS computer division, then office systems at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto), Digital Equipment's "Systems Research Center", and Adobe Systems.
Retiring from Adobe in 2006, I decided to aid an area that I had been interested in for several years: the role of astronomy in education. There were two main factors:
The "National Observatory" of the United States based at Kitt Peak Arizona, originally was chartered to support the astronomy activities of the smaller colleges and universities in the United States. But, starting around 1990, they decided to join the "giant telescope" bandwagon and they poured their (taxpayer) funding into new large telescopes and shed their support for the one-meter class telescopes that had been supporting the smaller college's research and PhD programs.
Several educational organizations had discovered that astronomy could play a role in science education in the secondary schools. Teens are interested in astronomy, and space-based classroom acivities can introduce them to physics, statistics, and other related areas. These organizations include "Hands on Universe" and "Telescopes in Education". Also NASA outreach programs and, in Great Britian, the Faulkes Foundation.
I have a longer bio elsewhere on this site.
The sciences fund was initially created with Adobe stock ("Thanks, John and Chuck!") and exists to encourage astronomy and science research, especially as it relates to education.
Its current activities:
Working with Lowell Observatory to rebuild a forty-inch Boller and Chivens telescope acquired from Northwestern. This telescope will be operatable over the internet and fifteen percent of its time will be available to outside organizations and individuals for astronomical observations.Working with the PROMPT telescope consortium, based at UNC Chapel Hill, to make the consortium's four robotic telescopes in Chile available to researchers and educators. To learn more about this, visit the PROMPT website and examine the proposal form.
Working with the AAVSO to create a homogeneous whole-sky photometric survey in five bandpasses down to magnitude 17. This multi-year project has just been funded (February 2009); details will be added as they become available.
Separate from the above is my long interest in amateur astronomy: star-watching. I became interested in the ninth grade when my parents bought me a Criterion four-inch reflector and I have been interested ever since.
I currently live in the light-polluted San Francisco Bay area, alas. My "dark sky" site is about 90 miles southeast of San Jose, at the 3000 feet elevation in the Diablo Range. It is about three miles from Panoche Pass, in the blue at ClearDarkSky. The site is primitive; I have two twenty-foot shipping containers there for storage. Persons in the bay area who might like to observe from this site are welcome to contact me.
At the site I have an eight-inch "bent" short refractor with a flip-mirror switch to a four-inch. This is similar to the "bent" six-inch that was the subject of Gary Seronik's column in Sky and Telescope of December 2006 (PDF). I use this scope a lot at low powers with nebula filters. I also have a Questar Seven, ex-spook, that I use for higher magnifications, mostly on solar system objects.
Individuals or groups with interests in this area are encouraged to contact me.
I can be reached via email as "bob" at this dot-org domain. Or at astroayers@gmail.com