Greetings, and welcome to the temporary webpage for the Observatory Complex at the Prescott campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
On the evening of February 11th, 2008, we made our first successful observation of an extra-solar planet transiting in front of its parent star! See our announcement for more details.
The Prescott Campus Observatory Complex consists of a 12" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, the 14" CCD Debris Telescope, and the Radio Observatory.
The 12" telescope is equipped with an SBIG XT-10XME CCD camera and a professional UBVRI filter set with which we can do research-quality brightness measurements ("photometry") of stars, as well as take real-time pictures of astronomical objects for public viewing. In addition, we have a fleet of portable telescopes that are used for "eyeball" viewing during public observing sessions.
The CCD Debris Telescsope (CDT) was given to Embry-Riddle by NASA and is optimized for tracking rapidly moving near-Earth objects such as satellites and space debris, as well as asteroids.
The Radio Observatory currently consists of one 4-meter radio dish equipped with a 1420 GHz detector (21 cm wavelength for detecting hydrogen gas). Two more dishes will come on line in the near future.
