In 1965, the observatory was relocated a short distance east of the Berkeley campus in the hills of Lafayette, California, on the Russell Reservation. In 1968, the observatory was equipped with a new Ritchey-Chretien telescope built by Tinsley Laboratories. Since, the observatory has been used as a testing ground for a variety of experiments and instruments. The predecessor to the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope was tested at Leuschner Observatory in the early 1990s, and in the early 2000s, the first prototype of the telescopes used at the Allen Telescope Array was unveiled at Leuschner. Leuschner Observatory's telescope continues to be regularly used in undergraduate astronomical instruction, while the telescope was decommissioned and is in disrepair. In 2012, the physics and astronomy department of San Francisco State University bought into the telescope. SF State and UC Berkeley staff jointly refurbished and upgraded the motors and control system of the larger telescope; SF State also installed a remote observing station based in its frequently fog-laden San Francisco campus.