LVAAS General Meeting
Sunday October 13, 7 p.m. at South Mountain
In Person, Speaker is via Zoom
Construction of a home observatory and 32 inch F6 "relay" telescope
Featuring Mario Motta, M.D.
I have been constructing and building telescopes since a teenager. Over the years I have built 3 observatories, 2 separate 32 inch telescopes, and a trailer mounted 16 inch F6.3 telescope. My latest built into my home, is a 32 inch F 6.5 relay scope with a spherical primary, a Mangan secondary, and 4 corrector lenses, that gives me a usable 30 arc minute field of view, that has a flat field, no aberrations, and no color distortion as well. I enjoy doing astronomical research with this instrument as well as observing and general deep sky imaging. The 20 foot dome was also completely homemade. This telescope was featured in Sky and Telescope in May of 2011. It has also been featured in the New York Times, Boston Globe and other periodicals.
Dr. Motta had been in practice at North Shore Medical Center in Salem, Massachusetts since 1983, recently retiring in 2022. He is a graduate of Boston College, with a BS in physics and biology, and of Tufts Medical School. He is board certified in Internal medicine and Cardiology, and is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology. He is an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Motta has long been active in organized medicine, both in the American Medical Association (AMA) and in the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), holding a number of posts through the years. He is a past President of the MMS. He was elected and served 8 years on the AMA council of Science and Public Health, and then was elected to the Board of Trustees of the AMA in 2018, recently completing his term. In May of 2023 at its annual meeting, the MMS awarded Dr Motta its highest honor, the “Award for Distinguished Service.”
Dr Motta also has a lifelong interest in astronomy, and has hand built a number of telescopes and observatories through the years to do astronomical research, including his entirely homemade 32 inch F6 relay telescope located in Gloucester, MA. He has been awarded several national awards in astronomy, including the Las Cumbras award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 2003, and also the Walter Scott Houston award from the northeast section of the Astronomical League, and in 2017 the Henry Olcott Award from the American Association of Variable star Observers (AAVSO). He has served as a president of the ATM’s of Boston, and has served as a council member of the AAVSO, and is a past president as well. He has also served on the Board of the IDA. He has worked on light pollution issues, and published several white papers on LP as a member of the AMA council of science and public health. He served on a UN committee (COPUOS) representing the AMA on light pollution for a worldwide effort to control LP and satellite proliferation. Finally, several years ago the International Astronomical Union awarded Dr Motta an asteroid in part for his work on light pollution as well as amateur research, asteroid 133537MarioMotta.
Prospective new members who wish to attend the meeting should email membership@lvaas.org.
