BYU Astronomy Research Group Joins the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC)
As of January 2021 BYU will be a member of the ARC Consortium (Link to Consortium) with access to the ARC 3.5-m telescope and the 0.5-m ARCSAT telescope. The primary use of the ARC 3.5-m telescope time is for graduate student projects. This provides a wide array of instrumentation that is currently being used to study objects in the solar system all the way to studies of the large scale structure of the Universe.
Other BYU Astronomy Facilities
In addition to our telescope time from the ARC consortium, we operate a number of our own astronomical facilities
West Mountain Observatory (West Mountain)
This is our mountain observatory at about 6600 ft above sea level. This consists of three telescopes: 0.9-m, 0.5-m, and a 0.32-m. It is a 40 minute drive that ends in a 5 miles drive up a dirt road. The mountain itself can be seen from campus. We don't provide any tours of this facility.
Orson Pratt Observatory
The Orson Pratt Observatory is named for an early apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is our campus telescope facility and contains a wide variety of telescopes for student research and public outreach. We operate a 24" PlaneWave telescope in the main campus dome, plus a 16", two 12", one 8", and a 6" telescope on our observation deck. The telescopes are all fully robotic. Beyond this we have a large sections of telescopes used on public nights.
Royden G. Derrick Planetarium (Planetarium)
This is a 119 seat, 39" dome planetarium with acoustically treated walls to allow it's use as a lecture room. Recently we upgraded to an E&S Digistar7 operating system with 4K projectors. The planetarium is used for teaching classes, public outreach, and astronomy education research projects.
Selected Publications
New photoelectric times of maximum light of the SX Phoenicis variable CY Aquarii are combined with times of maximum light extending over 64 years to determine the long-term period variations. The recent data do not show significant cycle-to-cycle variations as some have reported but the data do clearly show an abrupt period change in 1989 corresponding to a new period of 0.(d)061038612.
In a recent paper, Eggen has suggested that the Hyades cl anomaly is an instrumental effect. Using results published by Taylor and Joner, we show that Eggen's conjecture is incorrect. Taylor and Joner report formal corrections of published Coma photometry to a system defined in part by Hyades measurements. If the Taylor-Joner corrections are not adopted, the existence of the Hyades anomaly (relative to Coma) can be established at >99.9% confidence. if the corrections are adopted, the anomaly exists at 99.6% confidence.
In this paper, we consider the zero points of six sets of Stromgren-beta photometry. The color-index system to which our results are referred is a ''Hyades-Coma'' system composed of photometry by Crawford and Ferry (1966, AJ, 71, 206) and Crawford and Barnes (1969, AJ, 74, 407). For V magnitudes, we use measurements by Taylor and Joner (1992, PASP, 104, 911). Our results are as follows. (1) The zero points of photometry by Gronbech and Olsen (1976, A&AS, 25, 213; 1977, A&AS, 27, 443) are offset from those of the Hyades-Coma system. The offsets can amount to several mmag; they appear for V and all color indices except beta, and depend on right ascension and (usually) declination. (2) These offsets can be applied to photometry by Stetson (1991, AJ, 102, 589), who reduced his results to the Gronbech-Olsen system. After correction, Stetson's results for a set of ''transfer stars'' differ from comparable data published by Crawford and Barnes (1970, AJ, 75, 978). (3) A direct comparison of the transfer stars to the Hyades yields consistency between the Hyades-Coma and Crawford-Barnes zero points (for the transfer stars specifically). This result supports a conclusion drawn by Taylor and Joner, and suggests that there is some problem with the zero points of Stetson's transfer-star data. (4) From Stetson's corrected data, one finds that the Crawford-Perry zero points for the Hyades are consistent with the Crawford-Barnes zero points for Coma. This result agrees with a conclusion drawn by Taylor and Joner from their own data, and suggests that the problem postulated for Stetson's transfer-star data does not extend to his results for the Hyades and Coma.
