NEW CRYPTO PROJECTS 2024

Live view of sky from Wallace

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Night Sky Brightness

The night sky magnitude represents how bright our sky is directly overhead.  To see the Milky Way, this number must be > than 20.2.   

Current Observing Conditions

Live data from at Wallace Observatory from our SkyAlert weather sensor.

What's Up?

The 2023 fall semester has begun! MIT undergraduates who take course 12.410, Observational Techniques of Optical Astronomy will soon begin observing projects. Student observations will conclude on October 31st, after which science programs will resume.

This summer was a busy one - we had several successful campaigns, including: determining spin properties of Koronis asteroids, monitoring Pluto's brightness and observations of exoplanets discovered by the TESS satellite. One of our latest upgrades to the observatory is a new refractor, capable of making wide field measurements in Sloan and narrowband filters. We have also made significant strides this summer in automating the Elliot 24-inch telescope - a system that is capable of operating with no human input for weeks at a time.

About

Established 1971

A teaching and research facility run by the planetary astronomy lab in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).