Tuolumne Skies Observatory has entered into a collaboration with The Bay School of San Francisco, an independent high school located in the Presidio of San Francisco. Tuolumne Skies Observatory now allows junior and senior students who are taking the advanced astrophysics classes (for example, Cosmology and Stellar Evolution) to operate the observatory from their Project Center, through a high-speed data link.
Students also take multi-night field trips to run the observatory hands-on, where they image galaxies, comets, and other phenomena, and learn about the night sky and celestial mechanics. They learn the fundamental skills required to operate hardware and software in an observatory. The field trips are assisted by Bay School teachers, and occasionally by astrophysicists from U.C. Berkeley.
Bay School astronomy teachers and students have added to the technology at Tuolumne Skies Observatory, for a collaborative learning experience that emulates some of the activities that professional astronomers do day-to-day.