WIYN Observatory
observatory in Arizona
The WIYN Observatory is owned and operated by the WIYN Consortium. Its 3.5-meter telescope is the second largest optical telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Most of the capital costs for the observatory were provided by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Indiana University, and Yale University, while the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) provides most of the operating services. The NOAO is an institution of the United States; it is the national optical observatory program and supports a collection of ground-based telescopes at Kitt Peak (where WIYN is located) as well as other locations.
Telescope
WIYN is a Ritchey–Chrétien telescope with an altitude-azimuth mount. The lightweight borosilicate primary mirror has a diameter of 3.49885 m (137.75") and was manufactured at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. Sixty-six active optics actuators support the primary mirror.
The telescope is located in a half-Rhombicuboctahedron dome.
Current instrumentation
Hydra
Hydra is a multiobject spectrograph using fiber optics robotically positioned in the focal plane to allow up to 100 separate objects to be observed at a time. The light is guided to a spectrograph room under the main telescope where a CCD camera records the spectrum of each object.
“WIYN Observatory” enters the record as observatory in Arizona. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what WIYN, Observatory and observatory can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7951025. Authority coordinates are 31.957, -111.601. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “WIYN Observatory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.