A View from Afar

Astronomers Navigate Telescopes Atop Mountains in Arizona, Chile Without Leaving Campus

By Chris Bryant

UA astronomers have remote access to a 36-inch telescope housed within this mountain-top dome at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz. (William C. Keel)
UA astronomers have remote access to a 36-inch telescope housed within this mountain-top dome at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz. (William C. Keel)

University of Alabama astronomers and their students are gaining regular access to two mountaintop-based telescopes, including one in the southern hemisphere, without leaving campus.

UA has gained consistent remote access to a 36-inch telescope within the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz. and will soon operate a 24-inch telescope in the Andes Mountains of Chile. UA researchers are gaining access by virtue of joining the Southeastern Association for Research and Astronomy, said Dr. William “Bill” Keel, a UA professor of astronomy.

“It’s substantially larger than what we have here,” Keel said of the research grade telescope at Kitt Peak, one of the nation’s best astronomical research sites. “It gathers about five times as much light, and it will deliver images that are two to three times sharper than what we now have.”

In addition to the telescope’s performance advantage, its location is also beneficial.

“It’s on a mountain top site,” said Keel, a faculty member in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences. This location provides a steady, crisp view as observatory sites are chosen, in part, for their smooth airflow and lower level of atmospheric blurring. The desert-area weather is also more conducive to star gazing, Keel said. “We’ll have a lot more clear nights…about twice as many.” Light pollution is also not as big an issue atop the mountain as it is locally, where nearby campus lighting can detract from viewing capabilities.

The Chile-based telescope, located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, will give UA astronomy students views of portions of the sky they, and many other North American astronomers, have never closely examined.

This telescope, which gathers five times as much light as UA's largest telescope, is housed at a near ideal location for skyviewing. (William C. Keel)
This telescope, which gathers five times as much light as UA’s largest telescope, is housed at a near ideal location for skyviewing. (William C. Keel)

“Our knowledge of the southern hemisphere is still playing catch up,” Keel said. “What we’ll gain from Chile is that whole half of the sky that never rises in this part of the world.”

UA astronomers will gain access to the telescopes through a secure Internet site and will control the equipment during three sessions each month, Keel said.

UA’s 16-inch telescope, installed in January 2005 in the dome atop Gallalee Hall, can be operated remotely from a control room beneath the dome. Theoretically, operating telescopes half a world away is no more challenging, Keel said.

“If you’ve got remote capabilities, conceptually, it doesn’t really matter if you are in the next room or somewhere across the country.”

UA joins with Florida Institute of Technology, East Tennessee State University, Florida International University, the University of Georgia, Valdosta State University, Clemson University, Ball State University and Agnes Scott College as members of the consortium, known as SARA.

“There is a huge benefit for our graduate students and their research,” Keel said. Undergraduates will also benefit. “There are possibilities that we can use this for the second-year lab, and we’re working on ways to use it in Astronomy 102.”

Without joining such a consortium, the only way UA astronomers would have access to telescopes in this size range is through proposal submissions which compete for acceptance against proposals world wide. Winning time on devices of this magnitude is rare, as the competition is stiff, Keel said.

The Southeastern Association for Research and Astronomy leases space from the National Science Foundation for the operation of the telescope on Kitt Peak. The National Optical Astronomy Observatories maintains Kitt Peak National Observatory, home to the world’s largest collection of telescopes, and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.

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