Latest News
MMT January Observing Statistics
Feb 10, 2009
Time Summary
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 90.2
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 9.8
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr change 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 45.1
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.5
Percentage of …
MMT Telescope Trained on Moon During 2009 Impact
Feb 06, 2009
Astronomers will use the powerful University of Arizona/Smithsonian MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Ariz., to search for lunar water ice when NASA fires a 2-ton rocket into a polar crater on the moon later this year.
To read more about …
Elevation Tracking Report
Jan 29, 2009
The MMT elevation tracking has been evaluated for the 3rd trimester of 2008 and was found to be at a median of 0.065″ +/- 0.04″. There is a lower limit to the tracking smoothness at about 0.02″, or +/- 2 …
MMT December Observing Statistics
Jan 16, 2009
Time Summary
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 90.0
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 10.0
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr change 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 41.7
Percentage of time lost to instrument 7.7
Percentage of time lost to telescope 0.3
Percentage …
MMT Trimester Report
Jan 07, 2009
To read the MMT May – August ‘08 Trimester Summary Report, click below:
may_aug08
Instrument Change Movie!
Nov 26, 2008
At the MMT we do a lot of juggling of our three secondary mirrors & our current suite of 13 instruments. Over the last couple of years we have become so efficient at doing secondary/instrument changes that it is a …
Mysterious changes and weather seen on distant dwarf planet
Nov 20, 2008
Signs of Weather Seen on Dwarf Planet
Strange weather on the icy dwarf planet Eris could be causing changes that scientists are now seeing at the methane-ice surface of this distant object in our solar system.
A team of researchers …
CLIO imaging of Fomalhaut
Nov 18, 2008
Last week high profile publications hit the news about the direct detections of exoplanets around two stars, Fomalhaut & HR8799 (see ‘Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light Years from Earth’ Kalas et al and ‘Direct Imaging of Multiple …
The ‘MMT and Magellan Infrared Spectrograph’
Nov 11, 2008
MMIRS is the next new instrument that will be arriving for commissioning at the MMT. The ‘MMT and Magellan InfraRed Spectrograph’ is a wide field near-IR imager and slit mask multi-object spectrograph being built by the team at the CfA …
Excellent results from recent LGS run…
Oct 30, 2008
The most recent run for the LGS team (10/13 – 10/17) proved incredibly successful, producing some very exciting results. Following is the key results and images supplied by Michael Lloyd-Hart and the LGS team.
The ground-layer AO compensation resulted in …