Mt. Lemmon Infrared Observatory
(altitude 9157 feet = 2800 m)
An aerial view of the summit of Mt. Lemmon is located approximately 45 miles north of the University of Arizona in the Coronado National Forest in the Catalina mountains. In this view looking south towards Tucson, the 60-inch telescope is at the extreme bottom center and the 40-inch telescope is above it to the right of the road. The men's and women's dormitories are the long, darkish buildings near the top center. At the extreme right center is another 60-inch telescope operated by the University of Minnesota. In the building adjacent to that telescope dome, Astronomy Campers eat their meals and utilize a half-court gymnasium for lectures, demos, and recreation.
This 20-acre site was formerly a Radar Base of the Air Defense Command and was converted into an observatory for infrared astronomy in October 1970. A geodesic dome near the left center of the aerial view houses a radar tracking station operated from Ft. Huachuca and is the lone remaining military presence on the mountain. This station is used to direct the Space Shuttle to an emergency landing in White Sands, New Mexico. The square area at top right is a former communications center for the Titan missle defense system.
The summit area itself is Federal land and is maintained by the University for astronomical research and science education under the terms of a Permit with the U.S. Forest Service. The site operates on commercial electrical power with its own standby power plant. Water is obtained from several deep wells and stored in 500,000-gal. tanks (right center). A full-time supervisor resides at the site. Emergency medical personnel are based only three miles away and a helicopter landing area is available (left of geodesic dome) for emergencies.
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The 40-inch Cassegrain reflector. The f/16 optical design of this telescope features an inverted Dall-Kirkham arrangement with a single-arch spherical primary mirror (f/2) and a German equatorial mount. Equipped with relative encoders, the 40-inch has a fast speed, motorized slew motion in right ascension but is hand-slewn in declination. Astronomy Campers learn learn the principles of telescopic observation here and conduct research projects by eyepiece, CCD imagers, and a CCD spectrograph in visible light.
In the foreground of this picture is an automatically observing 10-inch telescope operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for atmospheric measurements.
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The 60-inch Cassegrain reflector. This facility is operated jointly by NASA (in support of its airborne infrared astronomy program) and by The University of Arizona. Its inverted Dall-Kirkham design incorporates a single-arch spherical primary (f/2) with interchangeable
secondaries to achieve Cassegrain focal ratios of either f/16 or f/45. The latter is used for infrared observations. This telescope is completely hand operated but does contain accurate encoders for positioning on the sky. An adjacent warm room is used by Astronomy Campers to analyze their data by computer image processing and to plan the details of their observations. |
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Last modified: Sun Oct 4 18:09:21 MST 1998