The VAO consists of an f/6.8 Cassegrain reflector with a 17-in (0.43-m) primary mirror and Dall-Kirkham correction lens. The observatory is located on the roof of Van Allen Hall (41°, 41’ 12” N, 91° 31’ 55” W; elevation 200 m) on the campus of the University of Iowa in Iowa City and the telescope was installed in August 2014 with funding from the Carver Trust. The telescope is mounted on a PlaneWave Instruments L-500 direct-drive Alt-Az mount. The imaging camera is a SBIG 6303E with a 3K x 2K cooled CCD sensor and a 32’ x 21’ field of view. The available filter set includes L, R, G, and B photometric color filters as well as a narrowband (5 nm width) H-alpha (656.3 nm) filter.