Jeffrey S. Medkeff - Career As A Systems Professional

Career As A Systems Professional

Medkeff was educated at Ohio State University. He was a principal in a technology start-up in the early 1990s, which was sold at great profit. He later took a position as a systems analyst at Ohio State, where he worked while his wife completed veterinary school.

In 1994, Jeff moved to Sierra Vista, Arizona, where he began working at Junk Bond Observatory in an asteroid hunting program. Quickly tiring of the tedious work, he began development of an automated observing and reduction system for this work.

In 1997, he adopted an early form of the Astronomy Common Object Model standard as his primary means of communicating with devices such as telescopes and cameras. He credited the ability to use pre-existing drivers and utility objects as freeing him to concentrate on design and workflow issues for the observatory.

The results were reported in a series of papers to the Minor Planet Amateur-Professional Workshops and in journals. By 1999, the observatory's acquisition of asteroid images was fully automated, and a considerable amount of the reduction was automatic as well. Medkeff founded Rockland Observatory around this time, and was later appointed director of the privately held Small Telescope Astronomical Research Observatory; further development was done at both facilities.

By the end of 2000, the process of selecting targets for a night's observing was under computer control, while still allowing astronomer-specified targets to be defined, and allowing targets of opportunity to interrupt the night's scheduled observing. By this time, a number of observatories in Arizona, Australia and Europe were utilizing Medkeff's system in whole or part. From 2000 to 2004, he refined the software, and also adapted it for use in supernova surveys, cataclysmic variable star photometry, and trans-Neptunian object surveys. By 2004, a number of famous observatories had licensed the software or adapted the source code for their use.

As a result of this work, Medkeff discovered a number of asteroids. He named these asteroids in honor of fellow scientists and skeptics such as Fraser Cain, Derek Colanduno, Robynn McCarthy, PZ Myers, Phil Plait, Michael Stackpole and Rebecca Watson. In 2003, the International Astronomical Union recognised his contribution to science by naming asteroid 41450 Medkeff in his honor, noting that "he has contributed to the discovery and photometric observations of thousands of minor planets."

In the spring of 2004, Medkeff sold his company to a firm specializing in automating seismic observations and retired from the technology field.