Word: center
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Though each of the observatories maintains its own financial and administrative structure, scientists pay no attention to those structures while conducting research. SAO and HCO scientists have offices interspersed on the same halls, and they consult each other without considering which observatory they draw pay from. Many at the Center hold appointments with both groups. Field, the Center's director, is also director of SAO and HCO. But even he cannot delineate exactly where each of the observatories begins and ends. Of his own conference room, Field says, "Who it belongs to, I don't know...
...astronomers to make significant observations without leaving the city limits. SAO had a staff of only five people in 1955, so Whipple got the observatory moved without much trouble. The informal link between the two observatories was formalized in 1973. Field became director of a new entity, the Center for Astrophysics, as well as director of the two observatories that comprise...
James Cornell, publications manager for the Center, says the combination brings together "all the various tools one needs to attack problems at the very limits." For Marc Davis, assistant professor of Astronomy, the tools include the grant-obtaining power of a Harvard faculty appointment, and SAO observing equipment in Arizona...
...capacity of a 176-inch reflector--second in size only to the 200-inch reflector at Mt. Palomar, Ca. The cost of the multi-mirror telescope, borne partly by the University of Arizona, will exceed five million dollars. The telescope housing alone cost over $1.3 million. Herbert Gursky, the Center's associate director for optical and infrared astronomy, says researchers will use the new telescope to make a systematic survey of quasars--the most distant, fastest-moving objects in the universe. Quasars also emit radiation at vastly higher levels than any other objects, because of their distance from earth. Only...
Some studies at the center are much more mundane. Jack Eddy, a visiting scientist at the Center, has shown how the amount of radioactive carbon in tree rings can be related to sunspots. Increased solar activity leads to warmer climates, Eddy says, raising the radiocarbon content of the rings. Another group of astronomers, working with radio telescopes designed to detect water vapor in remote parts of our own galaxy, found they could also use the radio telescope to measure the amount of water vapor in the earth's atmosphere. The method proved cheaper and more accurate than previous techniques, like...