Observatory Complex

The Observatory Complex is used for Astronomy classes and a wide variety of short-term and long-term undergraduate student/faculty projects in Optical and Radio Astronomy. There are typically six to 10 student projects in progress at any given time. Also used for public outreach in Astronomy, either on-site or via video streaming to the Planetarium.

Equipment

Optical Observatory

• 0.4-m Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope
• 0.5-m Ritchey-Chrétien Telescope
• Several eight-inch Dobsonian telescopes for first-year astronomy lab and outreach
• Five-inch wide-field imaging telescope
• Several high-precision CCD cameras
• Fiber-fed echelle spectrograph
• Portable telescopes for visual viewing
• Low-light video camera system (a node of the Lowell Observatory Cameras for Meteor Surveillance)
• 11-inch astrophotography telescope with color video imager

Radio Observatory

• Three-node Dipole Array Telescope (DART)
• 15-meter HERA test dish
• Four-meter dish
• Quad-Yagi steerable hydrogen antenna
• Five-element meteor scatter antenna
• Various wire antennas
• Many high-sensitivity radio receivers
• Small electronics workshop