Fan Mountain Observatory

South of Charlottesville, in Albemarle County, Virginia, Fan Mountain Observatory has given University of Virginia astronomers a genuinely dark sky since the mid-1960s.

About Fan Mountain Observatory

Fan Mountain Observatory is operated by the University of Virginia's Astronomy Department as a field station of the university's Leander McCormick Observatory. It was built specifically to escape the light pollution that had begun spreading from a growing Charlottesville.

History

The observatory opened in 1966 with a 31-inch Tinsley reflector, extending the parallax measurement work that McCormick Observatory could no longer carry out reliably from town. A 40-inch Baker-Schmidt astrometric reflector followed in 1972.

Telescopes & research

Today the site's instruments include a 1.0-metre astrometric reflector, a 0.8-metre Tinsley reflector, a 0.6-metre rapid-response robotic telescope, and a 0.3-metre Cooke Astrograph refractor. University students and faculty operate the telescopes nightly, working on optical and infrared CCD imaging, spectroscopy, and the study of transient phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts, blazars, supernovae and exoplanets.

Location & getting there

The observatory sits in the hills of southern Albemarle County, Virginia, United States, chosen for its distance from Charlottesville's growing lights.

Visiting Fan Mountain Observatory

Fan Mountain is primarily a working university research station. Check the University of Virginia Astronomy Department's website for any public open nights or tour arrangements before planning a visit.

See your named star from here

A working research observatory like Fan Mountain is exactly the kind of place equipped to point at precise coordinates - including those of a star named through Star Register. Look yours up in the star catalogue first.