The WIYN Observatory is owned and operated by the WIYN Consortium. Its 3.5-

meter The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using len ...

is the second largest optical telescope at

Kitt Peak National Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomy, astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. Most of the capital costs for the

observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. Th ...

were provided by the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

, and

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, while the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) provides most of the operating services. The NOAO is an institution of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

; it is the national optical observatory program and supports a collection of ground-based telescopes at Kitt Peak (where WIYN is located) as well as other locations.

Telescope

WIYN is a

Ritchey–Chrétien telescope A Ritchey–Chrétien telescope (RCT or simply RC) is a specialized variant of the Cassegrain telescope that has a hyperboloid, hyperbolic primary mirror and a hyperbolic secondary mirror designed to eliminate off-axis optical errors (Coma (optic ...

with an altitude-azimuth mount. The lightweight borosilicate primary mirror has a diameter of 3.49885 m (137.75") and was manufactured at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. Sixty-six active optics actuators support the primary mirror. The telescope is located in a half-

Rhombicuboctahedron In geometry, the rhombicuboctahedron is an Archimedean solid with 26 faces, consisting of 8 equilateral triangles and 18 squares. It was named by Johannes Kepler in his 1618 Harmonices Mundi, being short for ''truncated cuboctahedral rhombus'', w ...

dome.

Current instrumentation

Hydra

Hydra is a multiobject

spectrograph An optical spectrometer (spectrophotometer, spectrograph or spectroscope) is an instrument used to measure properties of light over a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, typically used in spectroscopic analysis to identify mate ...

using

fiber optics An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

robotically positioned in the

focal plane In Gaussian optics, the cardinal points consist of three pairs of points located on the optical axis of a rotationally symmetric, focal, optical system. These are the '' focal points'', the principal points, and the nodal points; there are two ...

to allow up to 100 separate objects to be observed at a time. The light is guided to a

room under the main telescope where a

CCD camera A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...

records the

spectrum A spectrum (: spectra or spectrums) is a set of related ideas, objects, or properties whose features overlap such that they blend to form a continuum. The word ''spectrum'' was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of co ...

of each object. The

field of view The field of view (FOV) is the angle, angular extent of the observable world that is visual perception, seen at any given moment. In the case of optical instruments or sensors, it is a solid angle through which a detector is sensitive to elec ...

is approximately 1 degree

Hydra has been operating since 1990. It was originally located at the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope before being moved to WIYN in 1994. In 2021, Hydra received a major upgrade to the "gripper" fiber positioning robot.

NEID

Funded by th
NN-EXPLORE
collaboration between

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

and the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

, the NEID spectrograph searches for extra-solar planets by looking for minute variations in the radial velocity of the host star caused by the orbiting planet(s). The extremely precise radial velocities (50 cm/s) provided by NEID will provide masses and densities for exoplanets discovered by the TESS space telescope. The name NEID comes from the

Tohono Oʼodham The Tohono Oʼodham ( , ) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native American people of the Sonoran Desert, residing primarily in the U.S. state of Arizona and the northern Mexican state of Sonora. The United States federally recognized t ...

word for "to see." The spectrograph was designed and built at

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

, with the construction beginning in 2016. The Port Adapter portion of the instrument, which provides guiding, focus correction, fast tip-tilt correction, and atmospheric dispersion correction to the starlight before injecting it into the optical fiber feeding the spectrograph, was built by the University of Wisconsin in collaboration with NOAO. On June 2, 2021, NEID completed commissioning. The NEID is also assisted by The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) with super-computer time and expertise in the scientific search for new exoplanets.

One Degree Imager (ODI)

The One Degree Imager (ODI) is the flagship of WIYN's new instrument initiatives. ODI utilizes both WIYN's one degree field of view and excellent image quality. The original design for ODI was to cover the one

square degree __NOTOC__ A square degree (deg2) is a non- SI unit measure of solid angle. Other denotations include ''sq. deg.'' and (°)2. Just as degrees are used to measure parts of a circle, square degrees are used to measure parts of a sphere. Analogous ...

field using a total of 64 Orthogonal Transfer Arrays (OTAs) with a total of 1 GigaPixel and a pixelscale of 0.11 arcseconds per pixel. Orthogonal transfer arrays allow to actively improve image sharpness by correcting images for tip/tilt motion during the integration. Corrections will be done over the entire field of view, making ODI a unique and competitive instrument in the era of wide-field surveys. ODI is funded by the WIYN partners and the National Science Foundation. ODI was first commissioned in a partial or prototype configuration (pODI) using 13 OTAs in the summer of 2012, and was available for science observations since early 2013. pODI was decommissioned in late 2014 to undergo a significant upgrade. The upgraded ODI, now using 30 OTAs in a 5x6 layout was recommissioned in summer 2015 and has been available for science observations since October 2015.

WIYN High Resolution InfraRed Camera (WHIRC)

WHIRC is a near

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

high resolution imaging camera commissioned in 2008. WHIRC was a joint project between the WIYN partners and STScI. It consists of a 2k × 2k detector providing an excellent pixel scale of 0.1"/pixel and a field of view of 200 × 200 arcsec. WHIRC can be used with the WIYN Tip/Tilt Module (WTTM) to provide exquisite high-resolution images. A large set of filters is available.

Past (no longer available) instruments

Mini-Mosaic

MiniMo is a CCD consisting of two 2048 × 4096 pixel chips, with a

of 9.6

arcminutes A minute of arc, arcminute (abbreviated as arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of a degree. Since one degree is of a turn, or complete rotation, one arcminute is of a tu ...

. The two separate chips allow for faster readout of the image than would have been otherwise possible, as they can be read out simultaneously

Governance

The WIYN Consortium is governed by a board of directors, which includes three members of each partner institution. The board meets twice a year. The Science Steering Committee provides scientific guidance to the board and the WIYN director. From 2000 to 2008, the WIYN director was George Jacoby, followed by Pierre Martin (2008–2010). From 2010 to 2013, Pat Knezek served as interim director. Since 2013, Eric Hooper (UW-Madison) has served as interim director. Yale University withdrew from the WIYN consortium on April 1, 2014 and was replaced by the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou or MU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Univers ...

in the fall of that year. In 2015, a NASA-NSF partnership called NN-EXPLORE effectively took over NOAO's share, although NOAO still manages the operations.

References

External links

*
WIYN Observatory
– official site.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiyn Observatory Astronomical observatories in Arizona Buildings and structures in Pima County, Arizona Reflecting telescopes Kitt Peak National Observatory