Observatories

The Magellan Project is a collaboration between the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (OCIW), University of Arizona, Harvard University, University of Michigan, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to construct two 6.5 Meter optical telescopes in the southern hemisphere. The telescopes are located at Las Campanas Observatory, at an altitude of 8000 feet in the Chilean Andes, and operated by OCIW. Observers may want to check the instrument information page.
MDM Observatory is located on the southwest ridge of Kitt Peak, home of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, some 50 miles west of Tucson, Arizona. It has two telescopes: the 2.4-m Hiltner telescope and the 1.3-m McGraw-Hill telescope. The Observatory is owned and operated by a consortium of five universities: the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College, the Ohio State University, Columbia University, and Ohio University.
The Curtis Schmidt telescope is a 0.61/0.91 meter diameter Schmidt telescope located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, about 500 km north of Santiago, Chile. This telescope was originally installed at the University of Michigan's Portage Lake Observatory in 1950, and moved to the much clearer skies of north central Chile in 1966.

The Peach Mountain Observatory primary instrument is a 26-meter (85-foot) diameter parabolic reflector. It was constructed in 1958 at Stinchfield Woods as a research instrument, under contract from the Office of Naval Research. At the time of its construction, the Michigan dish was one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. For the past two decades the 26-meter telescope has been dedicated to the study of total flux density and linear polarization from active extragalactic objects in the radio-wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
In addition, the Department operates the Angell Hall Observatory (AHO) and the Angell Hall Small Radio Telescope (AHSRT) on central campus. The current AHO is the latest in a long line of student observatories designed for hands-on instruction in optical observational astronomy. The AHSRT has been online since March of 2001. It is the first radio telescope available for student observing. Also, there are frequent open houses for public viewing at the Angell Hall observatories.
The Detroit Observatory is the original 1854 observatory of the University of Michigan, and a testament to the University's long-standing dedication to scientific research. No longer a part of the Astronomy Department, it has been recently restored and is now a museum.