Thanks to a generous donation from Physics and Astronomy alumnus John Luongo in 2009, SF State partnered with UC Berkeley to refurbish the 30-inch telescope at Leuschner Observatory in Lafayette, CA. SF State and UC Berkeley now share time on the telescope, operating it by remote control from the two campuses. East of the Berkeley hills, about 30 miles from SF State, Leuschner's site provides more fog-free nights and darker skies than the SF State campus Observatory. The 30-inch telescope is equipped with an SBIG STL-11000 CCD camera, enabling students to take data which they upload and analyze locally. Two SF State graduate students, Adam Fries and Eileen Gonzales (now a faculty member in the department) helped commission the refurbished telescope and completed Masters theses in 2014 using data they collected with it.
