Graduate Student Savanah Turner Publishes Study of over 300 L and T dwarfs

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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The KPNO International Spectroscopic Survey. II. H alpha-selected survey list 1
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
The KPNO International Spectroscopic Survey (KISS) is a new objective-prism survey for extragalactic emission-line objects. It combines many of the features of previous slitless spectroscopic surveys with the advantages of modern CCD detectors and is the first purely digital objective-prism survey for emission-line galaxies. Here we present the first list of emission-line galaxy candidates selected from our red spectral data, which cover the spectral range 6400 to 7200 Angstrom. In most cases, the detected emission line is Ha. The current survey list covers a 1 degrees -wide strip located at delta = 29 degrees 30' (B1950.0) and spanning the right ascension range 12(h)15(m) to 17(h)0(m). An area of 62.2 deg(2) is covered. A total of 1128 candidate emission-line objects have been selected for inclusion in the survey list (18.1 deg(-2)). We tabulate accurate coordinates and photometry for each source, as well as estimates of the redshift and emission-line flux and equivalent width based on measurements of the digital objective-prism spectra. The properties of the KISS emission-line galaxies are examined using the available observational data.
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GoldHelox solar x-ray telescope testing progress report
Jonathan P. Barnes, Peter W. A. Roming, J. W. Moody , R. Steven Turley , Paul F. Eastman, T. Lloyd, K. D. Eldredge, Allen L. Raines, and R. Takahashi (et al.)
The GoldHelox Solar X-ray Telescope underwent several tests during the years of 1997 - 1999, and continues through the testing phase of the project. The instrument itself, a solar telescope to ride on board the Space Shuttle, is designed to photograph the sun in soft x-ray wavelengths between 171 angstroms to 181 angstroms. Critical to its success, many tests are required to insure safety, robustness, and overall accuracy of the telescope during its mission. Among these are shake table tests, optical tests, vacuum integrity, and thermal analysis. This paper describes the GoldHelox project including its current status as a mission, the tests performed on the instrument to date, and the tests pending.
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The KPNO International Spectroscopic Survey. I. Description of the survey
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
The KPNO International Spectroscopic Survey (KISS) is a new objective-prism survey for extragalactic emission-line objects. It combines many of the features of previous slitless spectroscopic surveys that were carried out with Schmidt telescopes using photographic plates with the advantages of modern CCD detectors. It is the first purely digital objective-prism survey, and it extends previous photographic surveys to substantially fainter flux limits. In this, the first paper in the series, we give an overview of the survey technique, describe our data processing procedures, and present examples of the types of objects found by KISS. Our first H alpha-selected survey list detects objects at the rate of 18.1 deg(-2), which is 181 times higher than the surface density of the Markarian survey. Since the sample is line selected, there is an imposed redshift limit of z less than or similar to 0.095 due to the filter employed for the objective-prism observations. We evaluate the quality of the observed parameters derived from the survey data, which include accurate astrometry, photometry, redshifts, and line fluxes. Finally, we describe some of the many applications the KISS database will have for addressing specific questions in extragalactic astronomy. Subsequent papers in this series will present our survey lists of emission-line galaxy candidates.
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The Arizona-New Mexico spectroscopic survey of galaxies. I. Data for the western end of the Perseus supercluster
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
We present new optical spectroscopic data for 347 galaxies in the region of the Perseus supercluster. The new data were obtained using the Steward Observatory 2.3 m telescope and cover the whole optical window. Included are redshifts (for 345 objects), absorption-line equivalent widths, a continuum index measuring the 4000 Angstrom break, and emission-line Bur ratios. After 11 objects are rejected for being too faint and redshifts for 26 objects are added from the literature, we arrive at a complete sample of 361 galaxies. The distribution of redshifts for the whole sample is examined, and we show the relationship of the continuum index to morphology.
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The Arizona-New Mexico spectroscopic survey of galaxies. II. Structures in the Perseus supercluster
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
Using new redshift data reported in Gregory et al., we examine the structure of the Perseus supercluster. We discuss in detail three filaments lying in the plane of the sky on the western end of the supercluster that are distinct from each other in redshift and/or position. Additionally, radially directed filaments are found, and it appears that all of the filaments in the region are connected. We speculate that an important feature of filamentary structures may be the fact that many, if not all of them, connect in such a way as to form complete loops or rings. Underdense regions that border our filaments may not be very representative of the now classical cosmic void, in that their structures are not predominantly spheroidal.
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The Arizona-New Mexico spectroscopic survey of galaxies. III. On galaxy populations
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
We examine the population statistics for two samples of galaxies in the direction of the Perseus supercluster. One sample, with N = 258 galaxies having M-B less than or equal to -19.52 + 5 log (h) and v(h) less than or equal to 8000 km s(-1), is complete for those galaxies within the boundaries of our: survey region that have apparent magnitudes m(p) less than or equal to 15.0 in the Zwicky catalog. A more restrictive sample with N = 177 galaxies having M-B less than or equal to -20.00 + 5 log(h) (with the same redshift range) is complete in both luminosity and volume. We derive the statistics for the relative incidence of galaxies in the following spectroscopic classes: (1) absorption line only, (2) collisionally-excited emission lines only, (3) nuclear H II region, (4) starburst, (5) LINER, and (6) Seyfert 1.8-2.