The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is an optical telescope for astronomy located on 10,700-foot (3,300 m) Mount Graham, in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, United States. It is a part of the Mount Graham International Observatory.
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technique of precisely deforming a mirror in order to compensate for light distortion. It is used in astronomical telescopes and laser communication systems to remove the effects of atmospheric distortion, in microscopy, optical fabrication and in retinal imaging systems to reduce optical aberrations. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortions in a wavefront and compensating for them with a device that corrects those errors such as a deformable mirror or a liquid crystal array.
The National Solar Observatory (NSO) is a United States federally funded research and development center to advance the knowledge of the physics of the Sun. NSO studies the Sun both as an astronomical object and as the dominant external influence on Earth. NSO is headquartered in Boulder and operates facilities at a number of locations – at the 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in the Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui, at Sacramento Peak near Sunspot in New Mexico, and six sites around the world for the Global Oscillations Network Group one of which is shared with the Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun.
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is a consortium of universities and other institutions that operates astronomical observatories and telescopes.
The Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope is a refracting solar telescope at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma in the Canary Islands. It is run by the Institute for Solar Physics of Stockholm University. The primary element is a single fused silica lens, making it the largest optical refracting telescope in use in the world. The Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, with a lens diameter of 43 inches, is technically larger than Yerkes Observatory, only 39 inches are clear for the aperture. The SST is most often used as a Schupmann telescope, thereby correcting the chromatic aberrations of the singlet primary.
The Maui Space Surveillance Complex (MSSC) is a U.S. Space Force operating location for the 15th Space Surveillance Squadron and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Haleakala Observatory on Maui, Hawaii, with a twofold mission. First, it conducts the research and development mission on the Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS) at the MSSC. Second, it oversees operation of the Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC). AFRL's research and development mission on Maui was formally called Air Force Maui Optical Station (AMOS) and the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing observatory; the use of the term AMOS has been widespread throughout the technical community for over thirty years and is still used today at many technical conferences. The main-belt asteroid 8721 AMOS is named after the project.
The Haleakalā Observatory, also known as the Haleakalā High Altitude Observatory Site, is Hawaii's first astronomical research observatory. It is located on the island of Maui and is owned by the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi, which operates some of the facilities on the site and leases portions to other organizations. Tenants include the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGTN). At over 3,050 meters (10,010 ft) in altitude, the summit of Haleakalā is above one third of the Earths's troposphere and has excellent astronomical seeing conditions.
McMath–Pierce solar telescope is a 1.6 m f/54 reflecting solar telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, United States. Built in 1962, the building was designed by American architect Myron Goldsmith and Bangladeshi-American structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan. It was the largest solar telescope and the largest unobstructed aperture optical telescope in the world. It is named after the astronomers Robert Raynolds McMath and Keith Pierce.
Solar physics is the branch of astrophysics that specializes in the study of the Sun. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics and astrophysics.
The Dunn Solar Telescope, also known as the Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope, is a unique vertical-axis solar telescope that specializes in high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy. It is located at Sacramento Peak in Sunspot, New Mexico. It is the main telescope at the Sunspot Solar Observatory, operated by New Mexico State University in partnership with the National Solar Observatory through funding from the National Science Foundation, the state of New Mexico, and private funds from other partners. The Dunn Solar Telescope helps astrophysicists worldwide better understand the Sun and how it affects Earth.
Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) is a university-based solar observatory in the United States. It is operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). BBSO has a 1.6-meter (5.2 ft) clear-aperture Goode Solar Telescope (GST), which has no obscuration in the optical train. BBSO is located on the north side of Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains of southwestern San Bernardino County, California, approximately 120 kilometers (75 mi) east of downtown Los Angeles. The telescopes and instruments at the observatory are designed and employed specifically for studying the activities and phenomena of the Sun.
A solar telescope or a solar observatory is a special-purpose telescope used to observe the Sun. Solar telescopes usually detect light with wavelengths in, or not far outside, the visible spectrum. Obsolete names for Sun telescopes include heliograph and photoheliograph
Hinode, formerly Solar-B, is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Solar mission with United States and United Kingdom collaboration. It is the follow-up to the Yohkoh (Solar-A) mission and it was launched on the final flight of the M-V rocket from Uchinoura Space Center, Japan on 22 September 2006 at 21:36 UTC. Initial orbit was perigee height 280 km, apogee height 686 km, inclination 98.3 degrees. Then the satellite maneuvered to the quasi-circular Sun-synchronous orbit over the day/night terminator, which allows near-continuous observation of the Sun. On 28 October 2006, the probe's instruments captured their first images.
Daniel Apai is a professor and astrophysicist at The University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. He is known for his studies of astrobiology, extrasolar planets, and the formation of planetary systems. He is the principal investigator of the Earths in Other Solar Systems team of NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Studies and the Hubble Space Telescope Cloud Atlas Treasury program, and Project EDEN, a large survey for habitable planets in the immediate solar neighborhood. He is leading the Nautilus Space Observatory space telescope concept and co-leading the technology development underpinning it.
IUCAA Girawali Observatory is an optical astronomy observatory run by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, India. The Observatory is located about 80 km from Pune, off the Pune Nashik Highway in Girawali.
The Institute for Solar Physics, from 2018 to 2023, the institute's name was Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics, formerly known as Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics and thus abbreviated KIS) is a non-university research institute located in Freiburg, Germany.
The Goode Solar Telescope (GST) is a scientific facility for studies of the Sun named after Philip R. Goode. It was the solar telescope with the world's largest aperture in operation for more than a decade. Located in Big Bear Lake; California, the Goode Solar Telescope is the main telescope of the Big Bear Solar Observatory operated by the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Initially named New Solar Telescope (NST), first engineering light was obtained in December 2008, and scientific observations of the Sun began in January 2009. On July 17, 2017, the NST was renamed in honor of Goode, a former, and founding director of NJIT's Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research and the principal investigator of the facility. Goode conceived, raised the funds, and assembled the team that built and commissioned the telescope, and it was the highest resolution solar telescope in the world (until the end of 2019) and the first facility class solar telescope built in the U.S. in a generation.
Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun (SOLIS) is a synoptic facility for solar observations over a long time frame that is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and designed and built by the National Solar Observatory (NSO). It is operated by the NSO Integrated Synoptic Program (NISP). SOLIS is a single set of three instruments mounted on a common observing platform. The instruments are the 50 cm aperture Vector Spectromagnetograph (VSM), the 8 mm aperture Integrated Sunlight Spectrometer (ISS), and the 14 cm aperture Full-Disk Patrol (FDP). The VSM telescope is a quasi-Ritchey-Chretien design with a primary mirror operating at f/1.6. The ~ 400 W of solar light from the primary is reflected by a secondary mirror fabricated from a single silicon crystal. The final f/6.6 full-disk solar image is focused on a spectrograph slit that is cooled by a flow of chilled water-propylene glycol solution. The mirrors are coated with protected silver. To improve the internal seeing, the VSM is sealed by 74 cm diameter, 6 mm thick fused silica window. Originally, it was filled with helium at about ambient pressure and temperature. In 2014, helium was replaced by nitrogen due to the increasing cost of helium. Due to this change, the image sharpness was slightly degraded.
Jeffrey Richard Kuhn, also known as Jeff Kuhn, is an American physicist and astronomer who is a professor of astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi. He is known for his contributions to astrophysics and the search for extraterrestrial life, particularly in the areas of telescope and detection system development, the study of the Sun and its corona, and the search for planets around other stars.
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