The major instrument on Mt. Hopkins is the MMT Observatory's 6.5-m-diameter optical telescope. The current suite of FLWO telescopes includes a 1.2-m-diameter imaging optical telescope; the 1.5-m Tillinghast optical spectroscopic telescope; the HAT (Hungarian-made Automated Telescope) array of five small optical telescopes; the MINERVA array of four 70-cm optical telescopes; the MEarth array of eight 40-cm optical telescopes; and the VERITAS array of four 12-m telescopes for gamma-ray astronomy.
Ground-Based Telescopes
The Giant Magellan Telescope will be one of the few super giant earth-based telescopes that promises to revolutionize our view and understanding of the universe. It will be constructed at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Commissioning of the telescope is scheduled to begin in 2021.
The Las Campanas Observatory on Cerro Las Campanas in Chile, operates twin 6.5-m optical telescopes for a consortium of institutions, which includes Harvard University, the Carnegie Observatories, MIT, the University of Michigan, and the University of Arizona. Separated by 60 m, the twin telescopes afford fine "natural seeing," from an elevation of 2400 m (8000 feet) in the Chilean Andes and unparalleled access to the Southern Hemisphere skies for astronomers.
The MMT Observatory, a 6.5-meter-diameter optical telescope, is located on the summit of Mt. Hopkins at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, 30 miles south of Tucson, Arizona. The telescope (operated jointly by SAO and the University of Arizona) includes a suite of advanced wide-field imagers and spectrographs developed and deployed for the MMT by SAO scientists.
PS1 will be able to scan the entire visible sky to approximately 23rd magnitude in less than a week. This unique combination of sensitivity and field of view will open many new possibilities in time domain astronomy and address a wide range of astrophysical problems in the Solar System, the Galaxy, and the Universe.
The Submillimeter Array (SMA) is the world's first imaging interferometric telescope to operate in the major atmospheric windows from 0.3mm to 1.3mm. Located at the summit of Mauna Kea 13,386 feet above sea level, the array consists of eight 6-m movable antennas that can be positioned in different locations to provide highest angular resolution equivalent to an antenna of 0.5 km (0.3 miles) across.
The South Pole Telescope (SPT), a 10-meter-diameter telescope located at the National Science Foundation's South Pole research station, achieved first light in February 2007. Designed to conduct large-area millimeter- and submillimeter-wave surveys of faint, low-contrast emission, this telescope is a collaboration among the University of Chicago, University of California (Berkeley), Case Western Reserve University, University of Illinois, and SAO.
For over three decades the CfA 1.2 meter telescope currently located in Cambridge, MA and its twin instrument in Chile have been mainly dedicated to obtaining what is by far the most extensive, uniform, and widely-used survey of dense, star-forming molecular clouds in our Galaxy.
VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) is a major ground-based gamma-ray observatory with an array of four 12m optical reflectors for gamma-ray astronomy in the GeV - TeV energy range. Located at FLWO in Arizona, it consists of an array of imaging telescopes that permit the maximum versatility and give the highest sensitivity in the detection of light created by cosmic gamma rays striking the earth's atmosphere.
