Building and deploying a new astrometric instrument is a costly and time consuming effort.  In addition to computer systems, software, and hardware interfacing this included several subsystems: 

 

1) a new tailpiece (photos on this page), a means of centering the target and

                guiding the telescope during data acquisition; 

 

            2) a pair of new CCD guide cameras; 

 

            3) a pair of main CCD data acquisition cameras (to allow continuous year

    round operation); 

 

            4) a TV finder (1.5 degree field); 

 

            5) a remote focusing system for the Thaw refractor; 

 

            6) a photometric CCD camera with U,B,V,R,and I band capability, and

 

            7) an ND filter system allowing observations of stars over a magnitude range

                of 3 to 18 magnitudes in red (the band pass of the 30-inch Thaw refractor).

 

Most of the funding for this effort has come from two sources:

 

1) NSF grant number 0138222,

 

Increasing the Range and Accuracy of Current Bright Object High precision Astrometry.

 

2) From funding provided in support of the

 

NASA/Stanford relativity gyroscope experiment, Gravity Probe B

 

(http://einstein.stanford.edu/)

 

(GP-B; see, e.g., Turneaure, Everitt, and Parkinson 1986 in Proc. Fourth Marcel Grossmann Meeting on General Relativity, ed. R. Ruffini (Amsterdam: Elsevier), 411).