iotw2345 — Image of the Week
Kitt Peak National Observatory at the Cutting Edge
8 November 2023: Founded in 1958, Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, is home to one of the largest collections of optical and radio telescopes in the world. The 24 optical and two radio telescopes sit on Kitt Peak, the highest point in the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, 88 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Tucson, Arizona. Of those telescopes, 13 are captured in this aerial image. In its 60 years of operation KPNO has set records and achieved many firsts. The Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope (left), named after KPNO’s second director, Nicholas Ulrich Mayall, was the second-largest telescope in the world at the time of its construction in 1973. In 1976 Mayall was used to discover methane ice on Pluto. The oldest telescope at KPNO, the UArizona 0.9-meter Spacewatch Telescope, seen slightly below the Mayall telescope in this photo, houses the …