Mike Wenz

Mike Wenz is the Lead System Engineer of the Optical Telescope Assembly on the Hubble Space Telescope. He is responsible for the three Fine Guidance Sensor instruments on Hubble which allow the telescope to point and guide with the extreme accuracy that is needed to perform the science observations that the telescope has become famous for. He has worked on the Hubble Space Telescope for 27 years and was involved in all 5 of the Servicing Missions performed by the Space Shuttle. Mike is intimately involved with the day to day operations of the telescope and is the one responsible to investigate any pointing problems or issues that come up on a daily basis. Mike has used the information provided by the Fine Guidance Sensors to serendipitously discover hundreds of new double stars and was involved in a study using the Fine Guidance Sensors that led to the discovery of the smallest Kuiper Belt object ever seen. Mike has been an amateur astronomer for over 44 years and is currently very involved in doing high resolution solar and lunar imaging (with the occasional planetary imaging session thrown in here and there). Back when he was first getting started in amateur astronomy 44 years ago he would attend some of the Skyscrapers meetings and events.