Berkeley Automated Imaging Telescopes (BAIT)
BAIT is a collection of unattended astronomical telescopes with electronic cameras to search for supernovae and monitor the brightness of celestial objects.
Center for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER)
The goal of CASPER is to streamline and reduce the current radio astronomy instrumentation design flow through the development of an open-source, platform-independent design approach.
Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization (HERA)
HERA is an experiment dedicated to detecting and characterizing the signature of hydrogen during the epoch of reionization, the period when the first stars ignited and began to reionize the neutral gas that was the Universe. It is a Berkeley-led international collaborative project located in the Karoo Desert of the Northern Cape province of South Africa and continues to be expanded to detect this cosmologically important signal. It succeeds the earlier project called Precision Array Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER). Partners are Berkeley, Arizona State University, Brown University, University of Cambridge, UCLA, MIT, NRAO, University of Pennsylvania, SKA-South Africa, Scuola Normale Superiore, and University of Washington.
Katzman Auto Imaging Telescope (KAIT) Research Offices
The KAIT Research Offices, located in 525 Campbell Hall, are available to students conducting work with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT), an entirely robotic telescope dedicated to the search for supernovae and the monitoring of celestial objects. KAIT is a 76 cm diameter reflecting telescope equipped with a CCD camera and automatic guider; it is housed at Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton, just east of San Jose, California.
Leuschner Observatory
Leuschner Obervatory, located in Lafayette, CA (east of Berkeley), is home to a 30-inch telescope and a radio telescope, both used for undergraduate instruction.
You can help support and restore this important resource by giving a gift to the Student Observatory Fund!
Remote Observing Facilities
The remote observing facilities, located in Campbell Hall rooms 144, 146, and 155, provide a comfortable environment to conduct your Keck and Lick observations with all of the convenience of staying in Berkeley.
Rooftop Observatory
The Rooftop Observatory, located on the 6th floor rooftop of Campbell Hall, houses the Richard Treffers Telescope, a 17” PlaneWave CDK17, F/6.8 alt/az mount optical telescope used to facilitiate student instruction and research.
The La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4)
The La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4, PI Peter Nugent) will use the upgraded 20 square degree QUEST Camera on the ESO Schmidt Telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile to survey the dynamical transient sky in the southern hemisphere. This survey is designed to complement the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) being conducted at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in two ways. First, it will provide a higher cadence than LSST over several thousand square degrees of sky, allowing a more accurate characterisation of brighter and faster evolving transients to 21st magnitude. Second, it will open up a new phase-space for discovery when coupled with the LSST by probing the sky between 12–16th magnitude – a region where the Rubin Observatory saturates. Additionally, LS4 will also conduct focused searches for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave sources found by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA.
UCO Lick Observatory
Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton near San Jose houses 3-meter and 1-meter optical telescopes as well as the 0.75-meter Katzman Auto. Imaging Telescope (KAIT).
Undergraduate Research Offices
The Undergraduate Research Offices are a series of work-spaces that are made available for students conducting research with an Astronomy department member. An extension of the Undergrad Lab, these spaces are available on a rotating basis. For more information, please contact Mark Hayden.
W.M. Keck Observatory
The W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii is home to twin 10-meter optical telescopes.