Hard Labor Creek Observatory (HLCO)
The Department of Physics and Astronomy operates a modern observatory facility
located at a dark site within Hard Labor Creek State Park, approximately 80
kilometers east of Atlanta. The facility contains a darkroom and an
electronics shop in addition to sleeping and cooking areas for observers.
The principal telescopes at HLCO are a 16-inch Boller & Chivens telescope,
acquired from Kitt Peak National Observatory by GSU in 1986, and the
Multi-Telescope Telescope (MTT), an innovative spectroscopic instrument that
became fully operational during 1994. The MTT is equivalent in light
collecting power to a 50-inch telescope, exceeding in size any other telescope
in Georgia and is among the largest telescopes in the Southeast. The 16-inch
telescope and MTT are used by astronomy faculty, staff, and students for
programs of photometry and spectroscopy. Agnes Scott College has relocated its
30-inch Beck telescope to HLCO.
Speckle Interferometry/Image Processing
The GSU intensified-charge-coupled-device (ICCD) speckle camera is used at
large telescopes in both hemispheres. A new observing program using this
equipment at the renovated 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson, near Los Angeles,
California, was initiated in 1993. The GSU program of binary star speckle
interferometry is the most productive such effort in the world.
Other Astronomy Facilities
Other research facilities in the Department include copies of the Mt. Palomar -
National Geographic Society Sky Survey with computer generated overlays and the
Lick Observatory and Canterbury Observatory Sky Atlases. Access via Internet
to SIMBAD and other databases brings unlimited resources of this type to
researchers in the Department. The Department also operates a Cuffey iris
astrophotometer for photographic photometry.
Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA)
CHARA research activities center around the theme of high spatial resolution
imaging of astronomical objects using techniques that attain image detail
significantly beyond that normally obtained at large telescopes. CHARA
houses an on-going program of binary star speckle interferometry in which
GSU-developed instrumentation is routinely used at major telescopes in both
the northern and southern hemispheres. This core effort is widely recognized
as being the most productive high resolution astronomy program in the world,
responsible for some 80% of the interferometric data on binary stars published
to date.
The flagship program of CHARA centers upon the design and construction of the
CHARA Array, an optical array of five 1-meter aperture telescopes whose light
will be interferometrically combined to synthesize the resolving capability
of a single telescope 600-meters across. The CHARA Array will become the
world's most powerful facility for high spatial resolution studies and will
explore phenomena associated with stars and galaxies with at least 100 times
the resolution of existing telescopes. Feasibility and preliminary design
phases for the CHARA Array have been funded by the National Science Foundation,
and the NSF awarded $5.6 million for construction funding during 1994 with an
additional $5.5 million matching funds promised by GSU. The facility will be
constructed at Mt. Wilson Observatory, near Los Angeles, and the scientific
program will be directed from Atlanta.
CHARA operates the 16-inch telescope and Multi-Telescope Telescope at GSU's
Hard Labor Creek Observatory as well as an extensive network of computer
workstations used by GSU astronomers and graduate students.
Access to Major Telescopes
The GSU astronomers have also been extremely successful in obtaining large
blocks of telescope time at other observatories. Our astronomers have
regularly been awarded time at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson on
a competitive basis on the 158-inch, 84-inch, 50-inch and 36-inch telescopes
as well as the coudé feed auxiliary telescope and spectrograph. The speckle
program also uses the Mt. Wilson 100-inch telescope some 25-30 nights per year.
The quasar monitoring program is regularly awarded time on the 42-inch and
24-inch telescopes at Lowell Observatory and the 24-inch at Capilla Peak
Observatory near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Infrared observations of
star-forming regions are conducted with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility
at Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Departmental astronomers also utilize telescopes in
Chile and California and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and International
Ultraviolet Explorer Satellite. GSU students are given the opportunity to
participate in the observing activities at these facilities as well as in the
reduction and analysis of observations back at the university.
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