A large star is on left with the illumination of an exoplanet shown on the right over a star background.

Observational Astronomy at Susquehanna

A picture of a telescope

Susquehanna University has multiple research grade telescopes and instruments, but currently lacks an observational astronomy program. This project is dedicated to developing such a program. The first major success was achieved in Spring 2022 when the CGE 1400 telescope was moved to the dome atop Fisher Hall (image by Jocelyn McMahon) and was aligned to the sky. Thus far, several color photographs have been produced with the ST-L 11000M CCD, including of the moon.

Future work includes learning how to use the University’s spectrograph and using the CCD to acquire timeseries data of eclipsing binary stars, exoplanet transits, and asteroids.

The moon
First composite photograph of the moon acquired at Susquehanna University (CGE 1400, ST-I 11000M). Credit: Jocelyn McMahon, and Kurt Beecher.

People involved with this project

Links to papers, posters, and presentations related to this project
Upcoming!