It is delightful in its concatenation of the most modern technology with the ancient and simple principles of capturing part of the night sky for closer inspection. For millenia astronomers used their eyes, their memories, and their stones or papyrus. Over a few short decades, our eyes have become giant slabs of delicately hewn glass, our attention has become riveted by intricate guiding mechanisms, and our memories have been etched on fine-grain films and computer hardware. Only the cosmos is essentially unchanged. To record some small parts of the night sky, to look for changes in a largely unchanging universe.
Every observatory has to have a name.
Please join me in honoring the individual who really did get me interested in astronomy. Not only did he teach me the names of the stars in the Summer Triangle, he showed me a few other things along the way. I humbly dedicate this observatory to my father, Albert L. Ruppel .