West Mountain, Moon, Venus, and Stars

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.

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 public telescopes.

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. We will shortly upgrade 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

KELT-11b: A Highly Inflated Sub-Saturn Exoplanet Transiting the V = 8 Subgiant HD 93396
BYU Authors: Michael D. Joner and Eric Hintz, published in Astron. J.
We report the discovery of a transiting exoplanet, KELT-11b, orbiting the bright ( V = 8.0) subgiant HD 93396. A global analysis of the system shows that the host star is an evolved subgiant star with ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn1.gif] {${T}_{\mathrm{eff}}=5370\pm 51$} K, ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn2.gif] {${M}_{* }={1.438}_{-0.052}^{+0.061}$} ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn3.gif] {${M}_{\odot }$} , ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn4.gif] {${R}_{* }={2.72}_{-0.17}^{+0.21}$} ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn5.gif] {${R}_{\odot }$} , ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn6.gif] {$\mathrm{log}{g}_{* }\,=\,{3.727}_{-0.046}^{+0.040}$} , and ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn7.gif] {$[\mathrm{Fe}/{\rm{H}}]=0.180\pm 0.075$} . The planet is a low-mass gas giant in a P = 4.736529 ± 0.00006 day orbit, with M P  = 0.195 ± 0.018 ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn8.gif] {${M}_{{\rm{J}}}$} , ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn9.gif] {${R}_{P}={1.37}_{-0.12}^{+0.15}$} ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn10.gif] {${R}_{{\rm{J}}}$} , ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn11.gif] {${\rho }_{P}={0.093}_{-0.024}^{+0.028}$} g cm −3 , surface gravity ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn12.gif] {$\mathrm{log}{g}_{P}={2.407}_{-0.086}^{+0.080}$} , and equilibrium temperature ##IMG## [http://ej.iop.org/images/1538-3881/153/5/215/ajaa6572ieqn13.gif] {${T}_{\mathrm{eq}}={1712}_{-46}^{+51}$} K. KELT-11 is the brightest known transiting exoplanet host in the southern hemisphere by more than a magnitude and is the sixth brightest transit host to date. The planet is one of the most inflated planets known, with an exceptionally large atmospheric scale height (2763 km), and an associated size of the expected atmospheric transmission signal of 5.6%. These attributes make the KELT-11 system a valuable target for follow-up and atmospheric characterization, and it promises to become one of the benchmark systems for the study of inflated exoplanets.
Discovery and Photometric Analysis of the δ Scuti Variable TYC 2168-132-1
BYU Authors: Michael D. Joner and Eric G. Hintz, published in JAAVSO
Abstract We detail the discovery of the short-period variable star presently known as TYC 2168-132-1. We have examined four nights of photometric observations of this star secured in 2015 and find it to be a δ Scuti variable with a primary period of 0.0737523 days. The star is multiperiodic with three dominant frequencies at 13.556, 7.047, and 11.757 cycles/day. Evidence from light curve morphology supports the δ Scuti classification. We estimate intrinsic values for color and luminosity that place TYC 2168-132-1 within the lower part of the instability strip. 
Standard Stars and Empirical Calibrations for Hα and Hβ Photometry
BYU Authors: Michael D. Joner and Eric G. Hintz, published in Astron. J.
We define an H α photometric system that is designed as a companion to the well established H β index. The new system is built on spectrophotometric observations of field stars as well as stars in benchmark open clusters. We present data for 75 field stars, 12 stars from the Coma star cluster, 24 stars from the Hyades, 17 stars from the Pleiades, and 8 stars from NGC 752 to be used as primary standard stars in the new systems. We show that the system transformations are relatively insensitive to the shape of the filter functions. We make comparisons of the H α index to the H β index and illustrate the relationship between the two systems. In addition, we present relations that relate both hydrogen indices to equivalent width and effective temperature. We derive equations to calibrate both systems for Main Sequence stars with spectral types in the range O9 to K2 for equivalent width and A2 to K2 for effective temperature.
Prior Knowledge Base Of Constellations And Bright Stars Among Non-Science Majoring Undergraduates And 14-15 Year Old Students
BYU Authors: Eric G. Hintz, Maureen L. Hintz, and M. Jeannette Lawler, published in JAESE
As part of an effort to improve students’ knowledge of constellations and bright stars in an introductory level descriptive astronomy survey course, we measured the baseline knowledge that students bring to the class and how their score evolve over the course of the semester. This baseline is needed by the broader astronomy education research community for future comparisons about which strategies and environments are the best for learning the stars and constellations. As a comparison group, we also examined the baseline knowledge of 14-15 year old, 9th grade students from the United States. 664 university students averaged 2.04±0.08 on a constellation knowledge survey, while 46 additional students averaged higher at 8.23±0.23. The large, lower scoring group is found to have the same knowledge level as the 14-15 year old 9th grade students which scored 1.79±0.13. The constellations most often identified correctly were Orion and Ursa Major. For the star portion of the survey, which was only given to the university students, we found essentially no statistically significant prior knowledge for the 17 brightest stars surveyed. The average score for the stars was 1.05±0.05, as expected for guessing, although Polaris and Betelgeuse are labeled correctly more often than any other stars.
Adoption of ASL Classifiers as Delivered by Head-Mounted Displays in a Planetarium Show
BYU Authors: Eric G. Hintz, Michael D. Jones, M. Jeanette Lawler, and Nathan Bench, published in JAESE
Accommodating the planetarium experience to members of the deaf or hard-of-hearing community has often created situations that are either disruptive to the rest of the audience or provide an insufficient accommodation. To address this issue, we examined the use of head-mounted displays to deliver an American Sign Language sound track to learners in the planetarium Here we present results from a feasibility study to see if an ASL sound track delivered through a head-mount display can be understood by deaf junior to senior high aged students who are fluent in ASL. We examined the adoption of ASL classifiers that were used as part of the sound track for a full dome planetarium show. We found that about 90% of all students in our sample adopted at least one classifier from the show. In addition, those who viewed the sound track in a head-mounted display did at least as well as those who saw the sound track projected directly on the dome. These results suggest that ASL transmitted through head-mounted displays is a promising method to help improve learning for those whose primary language is ASL and merits further investigation.
Head Mounted Displays and Deaf Children: Facilitating Sign Language in Challenging Learning Environments
BYU Authors: Michael Jones, M. Jeannette Lawler, Eric Hintz, and Nathan Bench, published in 2014 conference on Interaction design and children (Aarhus, Denmark, June 2014), pp. 317-320.
Headmounted displays (HMDs) are evaluated as a tool to facilitate studentteacher interaction in sign language. Deaf or hardofhearing children who communicate in sign language receive all instruction visually. In normal deaf educational settings the child must split visual attention between signed narration and visual aids. Settings in which visual aids are distributed over a large visual area are particularly difficult. Sign language displayed in HMDs may allow a deaf child to keep the signed narration in sight, even when not looking directly at the person signing. Children from the community who communicate primarily in American Sign Language (ASL) participated in two phases of a study designed to evaluate the comfort and utility of viewing ASL in an HMD.