The weekly live shows are presented by a staff astronomer.

It was named in honor of Bo Reipurth, then a staff astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in charge of the Schmidt Telescope.

A staff astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory since 1962, he has been Chief of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office since 1996.

"It was a real mystery," said Frederick J. Vrba, a staff astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., who had worked with the Wesleyan scientists.

Dr. Mattei, an international authority in her field, had been the group's director and staff astronomer since 1973.

Two Generations of Stars The distance observation was made by Dr. Simon J. Lilly, staff astronomer at the university and will be reported shortly in the Astrophysical Journal.

He began lecturing at the Hayden Planetarium in 1952 and served successively as staff astronomer, director of the planetarium and deputy director of the museum before rising to director in 1969.

Dr. Oppenheimer, then a 31-year-old staff astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History and dressed like the New Yorker he is, completely in black, smiled grimly.

The tour includes presentations about the Master Clock, observations through telescopes (weather permitting), a video presentation on the mission and history of the Observatory, and discussions with staff astronomers.

In 1959 and 1966 staff astronomer Sidney van den Bergh composed a database of dwarf galaxies known as the David Dunlap Observatory Catalogue.