The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a 1,740-meter (5,710-foot) peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles.
The Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are a group of independent astronomical research facilities and large telescope observatories that are located at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, United States. The facilities are located in a 525-acre (212 ha) special land use zone known as the "Astronomy Precinct", which is located within the 11,228-acre (4,544 ha) Mauna Kea Science Reserve. The Astronomy Precinct was established in 1967 and is located on land protected by the Historical Preservation Act for its significance to Hawaiian culture. The presence and continued construction of telescopes is highly controversial due to Mauna Kea's centrality in native Hawaiian religion and culture, as well as for a variety of environmental reasons.
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.
Sunspot is an unincorporated community in the Sacramento Mountains in the Lincoln National Forest in Otero County, New Mexico, United States, about 18 miles (29 km) south of Cloudcroft. Its elevation is 9,186 feet (2,800 m). The Sunspot Solar Observatory and Apache Point Observatory are located in Sunspot in the Sacramento Mountains. The site of Sunspot is leased by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from the US Forest Service (USFS), and is operated and maintained by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. The telescope and site are both open to the public, and the visitors center offers guided tours of the site on Saturdays and Sundays. On other days there is a self-guided 1/2 mile trail around the telescope and White Sands overlook.
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.
Solar physics is the branch of astrophysics that specializes in the study of the Sun. It deals with detailed measurements that are possible only for our closest star. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics, astrophysics, and computer science, including fluid dynamics, plasma physics including magnetohydrodynamics, seismology, particle physics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, stellar evolution, space physics, spectroscopy, radiative transfer, applied optics, signal processing, computer vision, computational physics, stellar physics and solar astronomy.
The Dunn Solar Telescope is a unique vertical-axis solar telescope, in Sunspot, New Mexico located at Sacramento Peak, 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 by the National Science Foundation, the state of New Mexico and private funds from other partners. The Dunn Solar Telescope specializes in high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy to help astrophysicists worldwide obtain a better understanding of how the Sun affects the Earth. Completed in 1969, it was upgraded with high-order adaptive optics in 2004 and remains a highly versatile astrophysical observatory which serves as an important test platform for developing new instrumentation and technologies.
Mount Lemmon Observatory (MLO), also known as the Mount Lemmon Infrared Observatory, is an astronomical observatory located on Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains approximately 28 kilometers (17 mi) northeast of Tucson, Arizona (US). The site in the Coronado National Forest is used with special permission from the U.S. Forest Service by the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, and contains a number of independently managed telescopes.
The Algonquin Radio Observatory (ARO) is a radio observatory located in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. It opened in 1959 in order to host a number of the National Research Council of Canada's (NRC) ongoing experiments in a more radio-quiet location than Ottawa.
Walter Orr Roberts was an American astronomer and atmospheric physicist, as well as an educator, philanthropist, and builder. He founded the National Center for Atmospheric Research and took a personal research interest for many years in the study of influences of the Sun on weather and climate.
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is a scientific facility for studies of the sun at Haleakala Observatory on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Known as the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) until 2013, it was named after Daniel K. Inouye, a US Senator for Hawaii. It is the world's largest solar telescope, with a 4-meter aperture. The DKIST is funded by National Science Foundation and managed by the National Solar Observatory. The total project cost is $344.13 million. It is a collaboration of numerous research institutions. Some test images were released in January 2020. The end of construction and transition into scientific observations was announced in November 2021.
The High Altitude Observatory (HAO) conducts research and provides support and facilities for the solar-terrestrial physics research community in the areas of solar and heliospheric physics, and the effects of solar variability on the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper atmosphere.
Arthur Edwin Covington was a Canadian physicist who made the first radio astronomy measurements in Canada. Through these he made the valuable discovery that sunspots generate large amounts of microwaves at the 10.7 cm wavelength, offering a simple all-weather method to measure and predict sunspot activity, and their associated effects on communications. The sunspot detection program has run continuously to this day.
The Solar Observing Optical Network (SOON) consists of three U.S. Air Force (USAF) Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) solar observatories. AFWA operates a solar telescope at each site to monitor solar active regions at optical wavelengths. The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) archives histograms of intensity versus area every minute for the active regions. It also archives magnetograms of the magnetic field structure and tachograms of plasma velocities on an irregular schedule.
Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) is a research institute in Nainital, Kumaon, India which specializes in astronomy, solar physics, astrophysics and atmospheric science. It is an autonomous body under the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. The institute is situated at Manora Peak (elevation 1,951 m or 6,401 ft), about 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) from Nainital, headquarters of Kumaon division.
Cloudcroft Observatory, is an astronomical observatory located in the Lincoln National Forest near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, approximately 23 kilometers (14 mi) northeast of Alamogordo. It is owned by the Tzec Maun Foundation, a private astronomical organization.
John Wainwright Evans was an American solar astronomer born in New York City. He spent much of his career studying the sun and working with optics both of which earned him awards. The Evans Solar Facility at Sacramento Peak was named after him. Evans died in a murder–suicide with his wife in 1999.
Solar observation is the scientific endeavor of studying the Sun and its behavior and relation to the Earth and the remainder of the Solar System. Deliberate solar observation began thousands of years ago. That initial era of direct observation gave way to telescopes in the 1600s followed by satellites in the twentieth century.
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.
Richard Brandner Dunn was an American solar physicist and astronomer who was a pioneer in solar physics. He is known for his designs of solar telescopes and their instruments, most notably the Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope. At the time of his death he was astronomer emeritus of the National Solar Observatory.
