
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Yale pays $12M to Caltech for telescope time
By Mass High Tech Staff
Yale University has teamed up with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in a partnership that will give Yale access to the W.M. Keck Observatory, and Caltech a significant funding for operations of the observatory.
In return for 150 nights of observing time over the next 10 years on the observatory’s telescopes, New Haven, Conn.-based Yale will invest $12 million toward future operations at the Hawaii-based observatory.
The observatory has two 10-meter telescopes — operated by Caltech, the University of California and NASA — that are the largest optical telescopes in the world, according to officials at Yale.
Yale astronomers have, until now, used the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope in Arizona, which is owned and operated by the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Yale University and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, as well as SMARTS, a collection of smaller telescopes in Chile.
“Having access to the Keck telescopes will enable us to study some of the grandest questions in modern astrophysics,” according to Jeffrey Kenney, chair of Yale’s astronomy department. Yale students and researchers will be able to “study some of the grandest questions in modern astrophysics,” he said, now that they have access to the Keck telescopes.







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