Sunday, January 4, 2009

Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope

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The VATT, viewed from the LBT - Photo Credit me.

The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) is a 1.8 meter telescope located atop Mt Graham near Safford AZ. The location is aproximately 10,300 feet above mean see level.

The weekend before Christmas I was privileged to spend the night at the telescope, where we installed the new flat fielding device that I designed and built for last semester's Physics 500 research rotation. I'm happy to report that the device I built worked perfectly.

The next morning I got a tour of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The LBT consists of a pair of 8.4 meter diameter mirrors. That's a BIG telescope.

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