Michael Williamson

Background

About Michael Williamson

At Tennessee State University I managed the first fully automated spectroscopic telescope ever built. It has a 2-meter primary mirror and a fiber fed echelle spectrograph with a cooled CCD camera. For that telescope and five others that I managed, all at Fairborn observatory in Arizona, I wrote software in C on Linux for running the telescopes and roofs, and for reducing the data. I completed construction of a partially finished 0.75-meter photometric telescope (T15). I designed and built electronics and machined parts. I worked with optics, motors, motor controllers, pneumatics, photomultiplier tubes, digital cameras, and computer networks. I collaborated with astronomers in analyzing data from TSU's telescopes, for spectroscopy and photometry. I designed custom PCBs using gEDA layout software. I performed administrative duties on Linux systems, and used CyMOD/ADAM remote sensing devices. I maintained a website for one telescope, http://ast2.tsuniv.edu. I worked on the installation of an experimental fiber fed beam combiner for the Naval Precision Optical Interferometer. I've built stand-alone Z80 and microprocessor circuits for personal projects.