Jenny Jump

Jenny Jump State Forest is home to the United Astronomy Clubs of New Jersey, Inc. (UACNJ), an umbrella organization for New Jersey area astronomy clubs. Located near Hope, New Jersey in Warren County, the site is one of the few dark sky locations left in the state. The UACNJ observatories at Jenny Jump have a 16-inch Newtonian telescope, an 8-inch Cassegrain for solar observing, and a recently donated 16-inch Meade Cassegrain and a 7-inch Astrophysics refractor. Work is in progress at the site to house a 48-inch Cassegrain owned and operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology. Once operational, it will be the largest free telescope for public viewing east of the Mississippi.

AAI members built the Barry Malpas Observatory, which is a 10-foot by 10-foot shed with roll-off roof. We have installed a Celestron 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope on a Losmandy G11 GOTO German equatorial mount supported by a concrete pier. The GOTO function can be controlled by the Losmandy hand paddle or a Dell PC in the observatory running Cartes du Ciel and other guiding software. Remote control of the telescope is also possible from any PC on the local UACNJ network. Winter observing sessions where the telescope was controlled from the heated clubhouse were successfully performed in 2009. A 101mm Tele Vue Genesis refractor is also available for member use and piggy-backing on the C14.

Items remaining to be accomplished at the AAI observatory are: interior wall paneling and painting, a small amount of electrical wiring, and constructing a corner shelf.

More information about UACNJ including directions and a map can be found at http://www.uacnj.org/