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Fan Mountain Observatory
| Organization |
Astronomy Department, University of Virginia |
| Location |
Albemarle County, VA, USA |
| Coordinates |
37°52′42″N, 78°41′36″W |
| Altitude |
566 meters (1857 feet) |
| Webpage |
[1] |
| Telescopes |
| Fan Mountain Astrometric reflector |
40-inch reflector |
| Fan Mountain Infrared reflector |
31-inch reflector |
| Cooke astrograph |
10-inch astrograph |
Fan Mountain Observatory (or Fan Mountain Station of Leander McCormick Observatory), an observatory operated by the Astronomy Department of the University of Virginia in southern Albemarle County, Virginia. It was opened in 1966 with a 31-inch Tinsley reflector, with a 40-inch Baker-Schmidt astrometric reflector following in 1972, to extend the parallax work of the McCormick Observatory, which was suffering from light pollution from growing Charlottesville, Virginia by this time. Today both telescopes have been outfitted with state-of-the-art instruments and are operated nightly by university students and faculty. The primary instruments for the 40-inch telescope are a 2048x2048 SITe CCD for direct imaging and a fiber-fed visible wavelength spectrograph, FOBOS, for general spectroscopy and precision radial velocity measurement. The 31-inch telescope supports a 1024x1024 HAWAII-1 based HgCdTe infrared camera operating between 0.8 and 2.5 µm. This camera is capable of direct imaging in an 8.5 x 8.5' (2.5 x 2.5 mrad) field with 0.5" (2.4 µrad) pixels as well as polarimetry and grism spectroscopy. Fan Mountain observatory hosts a "public night" twice each year when eyepieces are placed on the two telescopes for general viewing.
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