Information Technology Infrastructure Improvements at Lowell Observatory

Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This project involves the renovation of the cyberinfrastructure at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The Lowell Observatory's assets are distributed across three separate mesas or hilltops. The proposal is to enhance the telecommunications connections between them, by deploying long distance microwave network links between the sites, and to renovate the data center at the Observatory's main campus. Lowell Observatory's telescopes are used for studies of small objects in the solar system, including comets and the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that orbit the Sun beyond Neptune. The Observatory's new Discovery Channel Telescope will allow a more comprehensive survey of KBOs than has ever been done. Researchers conduct studies of selected asteroids. The Observatory's facilities are also used for studies of the planet-forming disks of dust and gas around very young stars, studies aimed at resolving the persistent differences in competing theories relating stellar masses and brightness, research on binary stars, solar astronomy, the search for and study of extrasolar planets, star clusters within the Milky Way galaxy, and dwarf galaxies. In addition to providing infrastructure for research, the Observatory provides public education programs. Since 1996, several of the Observatory's astronomers have carried out a semester-long mentoring program in middle schools on the nearby Navajo and Hopi reservations. Through a partnership with Discovery Communications, the Observatory is building the Discovery Channel Telescope. The Discovery Channel's programming about the telescope and its science will is anticipated to reach hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide and will be a source of information about the cosmos for the general public.