For the mountains in Tajikistan, see the Fann Mountains. Fan Mountain Observatory (or Fan Mountain Station of Leander McCormick Observatory), an observatory operated by the Astronomy Department of the University of Virginia in southern Albemarle County, Virginia. It was opened in 1966 with a 31-inch (790 mm) Tinsley reflector, with a 40-inch (1,000 mm) Baker-Schmidt astrometric reflector following in 1972, to extend the parallax work of the McCormick Observatory, which was suffering from light pollution from growing Charlottesville, Virginia by this time. Today both telescopes have been outfitted with state-of-the-art instruments and are operated nightly by university students and faculty. The primary instruments for the 40-inch (1,000 mm) telescope are a 2048x2048 SITe CCD for direct imag