UNC Observatories

	The SOAR Telescope project was initiated by UNC to further astrophysical research by its faculty and students, and as an aid in teaching and public outreach. The telescope is designed to produce the best image quality of any ground-based telescope, and in the near infra-red should rival the Hubble.
	SALT is currently the largest single telescope in the southern hemisphere, with a hexagonal mirror array 11 metres across. SALT can record distant stars, galaxies and quasars a billion times too faint to be seen with the unaided eye - as faint as a candle flame at the distance of the moon.
	With support from NSF, UNC-CH has build six special-purpose telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in the Chilean Andes. These telescopes (called PROMPT), which have been specifically designed to identify and study the most distant objects in the universe, also serve as a platform for undergraduate and high school education throughout the state of North Carolina.
	The astronomical observatory atop the Morehead Observatory houses a 0.6m (24") professional Perkin-Elmer telescope. Chapel Hill is not Chile or 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 elsewhere. The telescope is equipped with several CCD cameras, including one attached to a stellar spectrometer. This telescope, like those that make up the PROMPT array, can be controlled remotely to execute observing requests submitted through UNC's SkyNet network.