Kitt Peak National Observatory

Kitt Peak National Observatory was founded in 1958. It is home to what was the largest solar telescope in the world, and many large astronomical telescopes of the late 20th century in the United States.

The observatory was administered by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) from the early 1980s until 2019, after which it was overseen by NOIRLab.

General information

Kitt Peak was selected by its first director, Aden B. Meinel, in 1958 as the site for a national observatory under contract with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and was administered by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. The land was leased from the Tohono Oʼodham under a perpetual agreement. The second director (1960 to 1971) was Nicholas U. Mayall. In 1982, NOAO was formed to consolidate the management of three optical observatories — Kitt Peak; the National Solar Observatory facilities at Kitt Peak and Sacramento Peak, New Mexico; and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The observatory sites are under lease from the Tohono O'odham Nation at the amount of a quarter dollar per acre yearly, which was overwhelmingly approved by the Council in the 1950s. In 2005, the Tohono O'odham Nation brought suit against the National Science Foundation to stop further construction of gamma ray detectors in the Gardens of the Sacred Tohono O'odham Spirit I'itoi, which are just below the summit.

The largest optical instruments at KPNO are the Mayall 4 meter telescope and the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope; there are also several two- and one-meter class telescopes. The McMath–Pierce solar telescope was for many decades the largest solar telescope in the world and the largest unobstructed reflector (no secondary mirror in the path of incoming light). The ARO 12m Radio Telescope is also at the location.

Kitt Peak is famous for hosting the first telescope (an old 91 cm reflector) used to search for near-Earth asteroids, and calculating the probability of an impact with planet Earth.

Kitt Peak hosts an array of programs for the public to take part in, including:

• Daytime tours, speaking about the history of the observatory as well as touring a major research telescope.
• The Nightly Observing Program (NOP), which allows visitors to arrive in the late afternoon, watch the sunset, and use binoculars and telescopes to view the cosmos.
• Additionally, there is the Overnight Telescope Observing Program (OTOP). This program allows for a one-on-one, full night of observing using any of the visitor center's telescopes. Guests may choose to do DSLR imaging, CCD imaging, or simply take in the sights with their eye to the telescope.

Kitt Peak's Southeastern Association for Research and Astronomy (SARA) Telescope was featured in the WIPB-PBS documentary, "Seeing Stars in Indiana". The project followed SARA astronomers from Ball State University to the observatory and featured time-lapse images from various points around Kitt Peak.

A major project started in the 2010s is the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) for the 4-meter Mayall telescope, for conducting spectrographic astronomical surveys of distant galaxies probing the expansion history of the universe and the mysterious physics of dark energy. Another major project is the NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler Spectroscopy (NEID), which started in 2018. NEID is an extremely precise radial-velocity spectrograph on the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope.