During December of 2014 the National Central University, Taiwan, invited me to visit them and give a scientific talk to their astronomy department. While there I had a chance to visit their Lulin Observatory, one of the leading Asian observatories, with several large 1.0-meter class telescopes and a new 2.0 meter telescope in the works. The Lulin Observatory is near a national park near Jade Mountain – a summit taller than Mount Fuji! Within the Observatory are a number of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars working on projects related to solar system research and collaborations with Caltech’s Palomar Transient Factory. In the coming years the NCU and Lulin Observatory may be hosting student researchers from Yale_NUS College and from Pomona College, as part of a summer undergraduate research internship being designed during 2014-2015. These photos are from the summit of the observatory and show the telescopes, our friendly crew that hosted me during the overnight visit, and some of the instruments. In the coming years Lulin and NCU will be major partners with Caltech in the new ZTF project, and have been developing an amazing new instrument known as the SED-machine.
