Astrophysical Research Consortium

The 3.5-meter telescope benefits the research faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and public outreach programs of each member institution. Using innovative remote software, astronomers can operate and collect data from anywhere in the world. The telescope has a suite of cameras and spectrographs that serve a wide variety of scientific endeavors, resulting in more than 50 refereed science results being published each year. There is an active outreach program at the observatory and at member institutions. The 2.5-meter telescope, which operates the SDSS-IV and SDSS-V survey projects, had a productive year. The SDSS-IV project was completed in December 2021. The project is still funding travel for scientific conferences in 2023. The SDSS-V survey began in October 2020 (slightly delayed due to COVID19) and is still fund-raising (trying to have more member institutions joined). A new corrector lens was built for the Sloan telescope. A new robotic fiber positioning system ("The FPS") was installed and commissioned at APO in November and December of 2021 and a second FPS was installed and commissioned at LCO in August and September of 2022. Operations are ongoing at APO and at LCO. The Local Volume Mapper Instrument (LVMi) has been installed at LCO starting February of 2023. LVMi operations began in 2023.