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Morehead Observatory
 The astronomical observatory atop the Morehead Planetarium Building houses a 0.6m (24") professional Perkin-Elmer telescope. Chapel Hill is not Chile or even Arizona, but skies can often be clear enough for graduate and undergraduate students to obtain useful data and experience that helps them prepare to use research instruments at national observatories.Many of the city lights in Chapel Hill emit their radiation in narrow wavelength intervals so, by using special filters to block this light we can still detect faint objects like distant galaxies or quasars. Morehead Observatory also supports active research programs in bright star spectroscopy and optical counterparts of Gamma Ray Bursts.
Visitors at public night have the opportunity to see the telescope in operation. Galaxies and star clusters too faint to see are readily recorded for view in exposures of only a few minutes using a new CCD camera. This telescope is connected to the Internet, and has been used for remote observing by students at Rice University, in Houston Texas as well as K-12 students and teachers participating in the SOLAR Project. Please contact the Physics and Astronomy Department office to schedule a Friday visit on a public night. Tickets are necessary to keep crowds manageable.
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