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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A 40/h MPC diameter void in Pisces-Cetus
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
Evidence is presented for the existence of a large region of space in Pisces-Cetus that is empty of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. The data base consists of rich clusters from the Abell catalog, galaxies from the CfA survey, and new galaxy redshift data collected at Lick Observatory. The volume of this roughly spherical 40h-1Mpc diameter void is comparable to the largest empty region (free of emission-line galaxies) in the recently completed study of the Bootes void. It is argued that the observed distributions of galaxies and clusters within the Pisces-Cetus void region are unlike that expected for a uniform distribution taking into consideration observational sampling.
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The Distribution of Emission-Line Galaxies in Selected Areas of the Sky
We discuss the spatial distribution of emission-line galaxies (ELGs) relative to normal galaxies in several areas of the sky. Current evidence supports the notion that ELGs trace a low-density population in all the surveyed areas with the possible exception of the CfA "Slice of the Universe" survey. Based on this and other survey data in the north galactic cap, we suggest that the ELGs inside the Bootes void may actually define the edge of a totally empty volume within an underdense distribution of normal galaxies.
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Forbidden O III emission in two magnitude-limited field-galaxy surveys
J. Ward Moody (et al.)
The paper presents emission-line strengths for 394 galaxies from the field-galaxy redshift surveys of Kirshner, Oemler, and Schechter (1978) and Kirshner et al. (1983) as part of a study of the nature of field and void galaxies. These data are 95 percent complete in their coverage of the forbidden O III 5007, 4959 A emission lines. It is found that 8.8 + or - 1.5 percent of a J magnitude-limited data set have forbidden O III 5007 A emission equivalent widths greater than 10 A. There is no evidence that the spatial distribution of emission-line galaxies in each field differs from that of galaxies without emission. However, there is a significant increase in the fraction of galaxies with strong forbidden O III emission in the southern fields of the Kirshner, Oemler, and Schechter (1978) survey as compared with the other survey fields. The results are consistent with the conclusion that the fraction of galaxies with emission is larger in the Bootes void than in the general field, but tighter constraints on the void normal galaxy population are needed to improve the statistics.
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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.