Facilities

Telescopes

• The 24 inch Perkin research telescope.
• The 20 inch Alvan Clark great refractor.
• The 16 inch Meade LX200GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain.

Members of our faculty also frequently use world-class ground-based telescopes as well as spaced-based observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope.

Computing resources

Students have use of our computer lab in the department to assist in their research and class work. We maintain a network of  workstations in this lab and in locations throughout the observatory. A range of research software including IRAF/PyRAF, IDL, CIAO, and many programming languages are supported on these machines as well as popular desktop tools such as Adobe Creative Suite, MS Office, and desktop planetarium packages.  The department also has access to a Beowulf supercomputing cluster located in the Science Center.

Onsite research library

Van Vleck Observatory houses a research library holding past and present volumes of most of the major astronomical journals and catalogs. We also hold publications of Van Vleck Observatory, the full collection of the Palomar Sky Survey charts, historical documents, and bound copies of all graduate and undergraduate student theses. Current and back issues of popular astronomy magazines are also held for student and faculty use. The majority of our substantial astronomical collection is housed at the Wesleyan Science Library, a short distance from the observatory.

Multimedia classroom

The Observatory has a classroom that is equipped with modern instructional tools that allow for dynamic presentations of course material. Available in the classroom is a carousel slide projector, astronomical globes and orrery, VCR, DVD player, overhead projector, Mac OS X and Windows computers, and docking station for laptops, all with internet access and multiple projection options.

Portable Planetarium

In 1997, we acquired a portable planetarium, in collaboration with the PIMMS program. The STARLAB is used to as a teaching tool in our introductory courses and is transported to interested education programs for use with their students. Teachers that attend the PIMMS summer instructional course can arrange to borrow the STARLAB for use with their students.