Kitt Peak National Observatory

(kit peek) (KPNO) An observatory near Tucson, Arizona, USA, at an altitude of 2100 meters. Founded in 1958, it is now one of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The site has a very large assembly of telescopes. The 4-meter Mayall Telescope began operating in 1973. It has a fused-quartz mirror, focal ratio (f/2.7), Ritchey–Chrétien optics, and Cassegrain (f/8) and infrared (f/16) foci. There are also a 2.1-meter reflector, operational since 1964, the 3.5-meter WIYN Telescope (operated on behalf of the universities of Wisconsin, Indiana and Yale, and the NOAO), and a Schmidt telescope. Facilities of the National Solar Observatory at Kitt Peak include the McMath–Pierce Solar Telescope Facility, with its 1.6-meter main telescope and its two 0.9-meter auxiliaries, and the Vacuum Solar Telescope (0.7 m, f/60) and the Razdow Small Solar Patrol Telescope (see solar telescope). There is also the pioneering instrument for millimeter astronomy, first used in 1967 and operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory; since 1983 it has had a 12-m aperture and a more accurate reflecting surface.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Kitt Peak National Observatory

an astronomical observatory in the USA, located on Kitt Peak (2,095 m) 72 km from Tucson, Ariz. It is under the supervision of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) and has been in operation since 1959, when a 41-cm (16-in) reflector was mounted. It was officially opened on Mar. 15, 1960, when a 91-cm (36-in) reflector was put into operation. Its other instruments include a 160-cm (63-in) inclined solar telescope with a 208-cm (80-in) heliostat (which feeds a 13.7 m [45-ft] spectrograph, a dual spectroheliograph, and a magnetograph) and a 213-cm (84-in) Ritchey-Chrétien reflector with a coudé focus. Its principal fields of research are the physics of the sun and the bodies of the solar system, stellar physics, investigations of the Milky Way Galaxy, and space studies. It publishes Contributions (since 1959).

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References in periodicals archive

Date on Kitt Peak National Observatory Kitt Peak 1.

Budget scramble at Kitt Peak: a federal agencies tighten their belts, several publicly funded telescopes are seeking inventive paths forward

Analyzing images and spectra taken with the 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz.

Topsy-turvy world of Cassiopeia A

"We're not planning on closing Kitt Peak National Observatory but rather to reconfigure it," he explains.

Changing times for U.S. astronomy: the budgetary writing is on the wall: the National Science Foundation doesn't have enough money both to operate all of its existing facilities and to build big, expensive new ones

astronomers is wrapping up a "portfolio review" for the National Science Foundation, and when the group releases its findings (slated, as we went to press, for late this summer), many suspect legendary facilities such as Kitt Peak National Observatory might get the ax.

Closure nears for two Hawaiian observatories

A single frame from such a computerized sequence doesn't really tell the full story," says Abt, an astronomer at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Ariz.

Astrophysical Journal: the movie

Robert Brown and Richard Goody of Harvard University's Center for Earth and Planetary Physics derived a period of 15.6 hours from spectrograms made with the Kitt Peak National Observatory's 4-meter reflector, which they soon revised to 16.3 hours.

A last hurrah at Uranus: the 7th planet yielded one final discovery for visual observers just before its revealing Voyager close-up

"This is an observation that has been needed for some 15 to 20 years," says George Jacoby of the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Ariz.

Closing in on the Hubble constant

Thanks in large part to government investment in space telescopes, interplanetary missions, and major ground-based facilities such as America's Kitt Peak National Observatory and the European Southern Observatory, the astronomical and planetary sciences have advanced human knowledge of the universe by leaps and bounds over the past several decades.

Is astronomy's golden age over?

Webster says she and her co-workers plan to apply for time on the 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz.

Frozen relics of the early solar system: astronomers search for distant comets

Farther south, outdoor lighting in Tucson became regulated in 1972, the first of many enactments to protect Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO).

Saving the night sky: light pollution is worse than ever, but a new mindset and new technology are poised to slow--and perhaps reverse--this bane of astronomy

She and her collegues used a sensitive infrared detector and the 2.1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz., to record the luminosity of young stars hidden in the dark clouds of the constellation Ophiuchus, some 400 light-years from Earth.

Young stars that jump the light fantastic

I was a small child in Canada when Kitt Peak National Observatory was founded in southern Arizona in the late 1950s.

Not the Stellafane way: here's how to whip up a giant telescope mirror in the 21st century