Through a Lens Brightly

The College has joined in a consortium with the University of Michigan and MIT to share in the use of Michigan's 52-inch Cassegrain-Coude telescope at a new location at Kitt Peak, Arizona, 6,300 feet above sea level.

A grant of $100,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has made possible the formation of the consortium. Overall cost of moving the telescope from its site near Ann Arbor and constructing two buildings on Kitt Peak will be $300,000, with the three institutions contributing the remainder through independent fundraising.

The improved efficiency of the telescope in the high dry air of the Arizona mountains will permit Michigan to share use of the instrument, according to W. Albert Hiltner, chairman of the university's astronomy department and first director of the observatory. "The sky there isn't so cloudy as it is in the Midwest, and one can observe fainter stars because the artificial illumination from cities is also greatly reduced."

"The telescope will be used primarily for optical studies of the peculiar sources in the sky that emit x-rays, such as collapsed stars, including neutron stars and candidates for black holes, the diffuse remnants of stellar explosion, and x-ray galaxies," explains Professor Forrest I. Boley, Dartmouth's representative in organizing the consortium.

The Kitt Peak optical observations will be carried on in conjunction with the MIT x-ray astronomy orbiting observatory, to be launched next month from Africa.

A steering committee of faculty members from the three institutions, including Professor Boley and Professor Delo E. Mook of Dartmouth, will approve the observation schedule for each month. Both undergraduate and graduate students from all consortium members will take part in the research programs.

A sketch of the MIT satellite observatory,which will transmit signals to Kitt Peak.

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