The MDM Observatory is an optical astronomical observatory

Observatory

An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed...

 on Kitt Peak (west of Tucson, Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

, USA), adjacent to Kitt Peak National Observatory

Kitt Peak National Observatory

The Kitt Peak National Observatory is a United States astronomical observatory located on 2,096 m Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O'odham Nation, southwest of Tucson...

. It is owned and operated by the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

, Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

, Ohio State University

Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

, Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, and Ohio University

Ohio University

Ohio University is a public university located in the Midwestern United States in Athens, Ohio, situated on an campus...

. The "MDM" acronym stands for Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT, because the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 was part of the operating consortium in the past.

It has two reflecting telescopes, the 2.4 m Hiltner Telescope (since 1986), used for galactic surveys, and the 1.3 m McGraw-Hill Telescope (since 1975), which was originally located near Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Hiltner Telescope

The mirror of the 2.4 m Hiltner Telescope is aluminum coated Cer-Vit

Cer-Vit

Cer-Vit aka CerVit or Cervit or Cer-Vit C-101 , is a glass-ceramic material made up of oxides of silicon, aluminium and lithium, with ultra low coefficient of thermal expansion, used for telesope mirrors and lenses. It was made by Owens-Illinois Corning in 1967, and discontinued in 1978...

, and usable foci include f/7.5 and f/13.5 Cassegrain foci. The telescope was built in 1986 and the mirrors were re-polished in 1991. It was named after astronomer W. Albert Hiltner

W. Albert Hiltner

William Albert Hiltner was an American astronomer, noted for his work leading up to the discovery of interstellar polarization. He was an early practitioner of precision stellar photometry, and a pioneering observer of the optical counterparts of celestial x-ray sources...

(1914-1991).

McGraw-Hill Telescope

The 1.3 meter, actually 1.27 m clear aperture, telescope is aluminum coated Cer-Vit (low thermal expansion glass), and usable foci include f/7.5 and f/13.5. The telescope was originally installed at Stinchfield Woods, Michigan in 1969, and moved in 1975 to MDM.

External links

• MDM Observatory
• Aerial view of observatory
• Kitt Peak Clear Sky Clock Forecasts of observing conditions.