The WIYN facility is located at the Kitt Peak National Observatory but is owned and run by the WIYN Consortium which consists of the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Yale University and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). 

 

The WIYN 3.5m telescope is the second largest at Kitt Peak, with the Mayall telescope being the first largest. The building that houses the telescope is much smaller than the building that contains the Mayall telescope, however, as the focal length is much shorter resulting in a shorter telescope.

 

Active ventilation of the telescope mount and an open telescope chamber help to keep the instruments cooler, allowing for better 'seeing', which has allowed the WIYN telescope to take the sharpest images of all the telescopes at the site. It is also due to be upgraded with a 'tip-tilt' module and adaptive optics which will allow the telescope to take even sharper images than we have previously seen. 

 

The telescope is mainly used for research into supernovae in distant galaxies, due to the high resolution of the images which means that it is able to find specific explosion events in far away galaxies, which other telescopes of this size are unable to achieve. They are using this research to develop our understanding of gamma ray bursts and the evolution of stars in clusters. 

 

A copy of the visitor guide for this site will be available to download soon!