The astronomy/astrophysics group at Dartmouth consists of six faculty
members (plus one adjunct) within the Department of Physics and
Astronomy. Three of the faculty are primarily optical/infrared
observers, while the other three are theorists. There are a number of
graduate students in the group. Each year, several undergraduates are
involved in research with the group. Our observing facilities are
located at the MDM Observatory on Kitt Peak,
which we operate jointly with the University of Michigan, Ohio State
University, and Columbia University. MDM has 2.4-meter (shown on the right)
and 1.3-meter
telescopes and a suite of state-of-the-art optical and infrared
instruments.
Dartmouth has recently purchased an 10% share of the 10-meter
Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). SALT (pictured on the
left) will become operational in 2005 and will be the largest optical
telescope in the southern hemisphere. SALT will provide Dartmouth
students and faculty guaranteed access to approximately 26 clear nights of
10-meter telescope time per year.
The group has an heterogeneous computing environment, consisting of a
variety of UNIX workstations (Suns, DEC alphas, P-4 and Athlon
linux boxes). In addition, members of the group have access to a 50
node Beowulf cluster of Athlon XP 2000 CPUs which is located on the
main floor of Wilder Lab. The astronomy/astrophysics group has their
own research 'lab' which is used for computational purposes. For
teaching purposes, the group has two LX-200 10'' Meade
telescopes. These telescopes are located on the roof of Wilder
Laboratory.