The Willard L. Eccles Foundation just donated $600,000 to the University of Utah, so that they can build a 32-inch, research-class, optical telescope in southern Utah. What's the big attraction? The University of Utah wants to establish a full-fledged astronomy program (and maybe create a high-altitude observatory to attract other new telescopes to the state.
The physicists' online proposal for the new telescope says: "Additional telescopes will be attracted to the facility due to its large area, dark sky, excellent weather, high altitude and relatively centralized location within the United States."
University of Utah physicists already have formed a collaboration with other institutions to develop the observatory. They include Utah State University, Weber State University, Dixie State College, Southern Utah University, Brigham Young University, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, the Salt Lake Astronomical Society, Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, the University of Chicago, Chicago's Adler Planetarium, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
According to the proposal, the new telescope "will greatly enhance the ability of our department to train graduate students in astronomy,"
The Department of Physics has researchers in gamma ray astronomy and cosmic ray physics, and theoreticians who study black holes, dark matter and planet formation, but it lacks observational astronomers, Gondolo says.
You can read the entire article by clicking this link.
I for one think this sounds like a stellar idea...
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