Utah Aurora - May 10/11 2024

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

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Redshift studies of large-scale structure. II - A faint sample in the direction of the Coma/A1367 supercluster
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
The authors add 26 new redshifts for 16th magnitude galaxies in the direction of the Coma void and Coma/A1367 superclusters. No galaxies are found to lie in the void. The supercluster is shown to be distinctly separate from a near-background population. A large void is found with 13,000 ⪉ V ⪉ 19,000 km s-1, and a massive supercluster is found with 19,000 ⪉ V ⪉ 23,000 km s-1.
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Radio sources associated with emission-line galaxies in the Bootes void
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
VLA 20 cm continuum observations of eight emission-line galaxies in the Bootes void are presented. Five of the eight galaxies have weak (0.7 - 4.4 mJy) and compact radio emission. The radio and optical properties of these galaxies are compared with those of Seyferts and starburst galaxies in an effort to understand the origin and nature of galaxy activity in such an underdense region. The authors conclude that the radio and optical properties of these galaxies are remarkably similar to those of active galaxies in richer cluster environments.
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A VLA 20 CM survey of poor groups of galaxies
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
The paper reports on VLA 20 cm observations of an extensive sample of galaxies in 139 poor groups. These groups, composed of galaxies down to the limit of the Zwicky et al. (CGCG) catalog, were chosen using a percolation algorithm set at a high surface-density threshold. Approximately 50 percent of the groups have measured redshifts. These groups were surveyed using a 'snapshot' mode of the VLA with a resolution of about 13 arcsec. Analysis of the resulting radio and optical properties reveals that the presence of a nearby companion galaxy has an important role in generating radio emission in a galaxy. CCD observations of two radio-loud, disturbed galaxies with companions are presented and are used to discuss models of radio-source production. Nine tailed radio galaxies are found in the poor groups, which is much more than had been expected from previous work on rich clusters and from theoretical models. The paper discusses previous statistical biases and proposes a method for bending head-tail sources in poor groups. From the confinement of extended radio features associated with tailed sources, the presence of a substantial intracluster medium that should radiate significantly at soft-X-ray energies is predicted.
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Emission-line galaxies in the Bootes void
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
The observation of three new Boo void emission-line galaxies (ELGs) in a 460-550-nm 4.5-deg prism survey, medium-dispersion spectra, and direct CCD R imagery is reported. The data are presented in tables, spectra, and isophotal maps along with data on five previously discovered Boo void ELGs. Six of the eight galaxies are shown to be similar to H II regions, with irregular morphologies, narrow lines, weak stellar continua, and diameters of about 10/h kpc; the other two are I Zw 81 (with a well-defined nucleus) and the Seyfert 1 spiral Mrk 845. The galaxy density of the void is estimated as no less than 10 percent of the cosmic mean galaxy density, and it is suggested that the fraction of ELGs in this region may be elevated.
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A spectroscopic survey of case emission-line galaxies in the direction of the Bootes void
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
Redshifts are reported for 44 objects in the list of emission-line objects published by Sanduleak and Pesch in 1982. Two or these are found to be high-redshift quasars, three are galactic stars, three are galaxies with absorption lines only, five are unidentified objects with no emission lines, and the remaining 31 are emission-line galaxies. A wide variety of emission lines strengths is found for each of the Sanduleak and Pesch emission classes except the strongest. The estimated redshifts for galaxies given by Sanduleak and Pesch correlate well with the measured redshifts. The distribution of the emission line galaxies is not homogeneous and is similar to that of galaxies from the CfA survey in the overlapping region. Seven of the galaxies are found near the boundaries of the large Bootes void, and two lie within the void boundaries drawn by Kirshner and colleagues in 1983. The question of whether the void could be populated with low-luminosity galaxies remains unanswered.
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Optical interferometric measurements of nighttime equatorial thermospheric winds at Arequipa, Peru
J. W. Moody (et al.)
We obtained nighttime measurements of equatorial thermospheric wind dynamics at Arequipa, Peru, with an automated field-widened Fabry-Perot interferometer between April 1983 and August 1983 and reduced data from 62 nights. Significant seasonal variations in both zonal and meridional components of the thermospheric neutral wind vector were observed. Near the equinox, between 2000 and 2300 LT, the zonal wind component is eastward with an amplitude between 100 and 150 m/s that gradually ebbs to zero by dawn. The meridional component is generally small throughout the night. In the winter months (May–August) and at the winter solstice the zonal wind persists eastward throughout the night with speeds between 50 and 150 m/s. The meridional component is directed poleward (southward) toward the winter hemisphere with a speed of 50–75 m/s that decays to zero by midnight. Comparison with the predictions of the National Center for Atmospheric Research thermospheric general circulation model for equinoctial and solstice conditions shows good agreement. We conclude that the observed seasonal changes are caused by the changing nature of the solar forcing function. The Arequipa results found the day-to-day variability in the winter thermospheric winds to be less than that found for the summer equatorial observations obtained at Kwajalein. Interferometric measurements of the 630.0-nm intensity at equinox showed a major reduction of the emission lasting 1 or 2 hours in all directions but south shortly after evening twilight; this decrease was not observed during winter.