Bill Keel's Telescope Life List

Telescopes I've Used (and what I've done with them)

I admit it - I'm a telescope junkie. Backyard, mountaintop, optical, infrared, orbiting, any flavor. I do have the good fortune to be in a profession that doesn't consider this too much of an aberration. To show what kinds of projects can be done with various instruments (at least the kinds I've thought of), here's a gallery of observatories and telescopes I've used with some sample data and results. Since astrophysics now has (and needs) access to much of the electromagnetic spectrum, there are optical, infrared, radio, ultraviolet, and X-ray facilities to be found. For each picture, a click will get you the full-sized version. There is a mix of pictures of and data through each telescope. Where one exists, I've included links to the "official" WWW sites for these instruments, and to the TerraServer overhead imagery. Some of the USGS images are included here. Some images are still to be added, and all the listed sites will eventually have their own information and image pages.

About the picture above: this 30-second exposure taken on 20 December 1999 shows a brilliant flare (visual magnitude about -6) from the Iridium 62 satellite seen over Kitt Peak, as viewed from MDM Observatory. Lyra is rising in the background with Vega at left. More information on Iridium flares (and other satellite viewing opportunities) may be found at the Heavens-Above site, especially now that the future of the Iridium communications constellation is in less doubt than before.

Nashville - my back yard, Dyer Observatory

Lick Observatory - Crossley, Nickel 1m, Shane 3m, 0.5m astrographic telescopes

Mount Lemmon - 1.5m UCSD-UM telescope

Kitt Peak - 0.9m, 1.3m, 2.1m, 4m Mayall, WIYN telescopes

Lowell Observatory - 42" telescope

La Palma - JKT, INT, WHT, NOT

Bol'shoi Teleskop Azimutal'nyi, North Caucasus

Cerro Tololo - 1.5m, 4m Blanco telescopes

European Southern Observatory, La Silla - 2.2m, 3.6m telescopes

NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, Mauna Kea

MMT, Mt. Hopkins, Arizona

MDM Observatory - 2.4m Hiltner telescope

Palomar Mountain, California - 5-m Hale telescope, Schmidt telescope, 1.5m telescope

SARA Observatory, Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo - 1m telescope

ARC 3.5m telescope, Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico

Gemini Observatory, Mauna Kea and Cerro Pachon

UA's 16-inch reflector and its predecessor, the 10-inch refractor, in Tuscaloosa

NRAO: Very Large Array, 43m telescope

James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, Mauna Kea

Low Earth orbit - Hubble Space Telescope, ROSAT, IRAS, STS-95 Starlite, FUSE, GALEX, Swift, Suzaku

High Earth orbit - ISO, Chandra, XMM-Newton

Geosynchronous orbit - IUE

Solar escape orbit - Voyager 2

In addition, I've got "tourist" pictures of some other instruments that I haven't used, either because I haven't got an original use for them or their operators have too much sense to let me on. Some are hidden with their neighbors in the list above, and a few more at additional sites are:

Appalachian State University - student observatory , and 0.8m and 0.45m telescopes at dark-sky site

Berlin: the Archenbold Observatory at Treptow Park

Bonn: Argelander's survey telescope

Butler University, Indianapolis - Holcomb Observatory, 1-meter telescope

Byurakan: 1m Schmidt and 2.6m telescopes

Cincinnati Observatory - main dome, north dome, 30-cm refractor from 1845 (also with Venus and Jupiter), 40-cm Clark refractor

Dwingeloo 25m radio telescope

East Tennessee State University - observatory, 14" telescope and polarimeter

Effelsberg 100m radio telescope

Greenwich, Royal Observatory - 70-cm refractor and its onion dome.

Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles - 30-cm Zeiss refractor, astronomers' monument

Goettingen - Sternwarte