Less than 50 miles from Tucson, Kitt Peak National Observatory is light years away when it comes to researching the universe.
Kitt Peak is home to arguably the largest collection of major optical telescopes on planet Earth, but it also has an important educational function.
“Education for the astronomy, education for the Oodham culture,” said Kitt Peak Visitors Center Assistant Manager Vivian Segundo.
Segundo is a member of the Tohono Oodham Nation and a council representative from the Chukut Kuk District.
She believes visitors should learn about the significant astronomy work being done at Kitt Peak, but also learn about the significance the Oodham people place on this awe-inspiring mountain.
“It is a sacred mountain here and our Oodham land,” Segundo explained.
Back in 1958, the National Science Foundation had to convince Oodham Nation leaders the lease the mountain for a national observatory.
“They had to show them what they were going to actually be doing,” said Segundo. “They did get to look through a telescope. At that time, they called them the people with long eyes.”
The Oodham Nation signed a perpetual lease with the people with long eyes. After constructing a road, the first telescope on Kitt Peak began operating in 1960.
Today, Kitt Peak is home to more than 20 optical and two radio telescopes.
“Right now, Kitt Peak, you could argue, is the largest concentration of major optical telescopes on Earth,” said Kitt Peak Visitors Center Operations Manager Peter McMahon.
The Kitt Peak Visitors Center is abut to celebrate 60 years of educating visitors who come to the National Observatory. They offer daily tours, a nighttime observation tour and an overnight telescope observing program.
There are several significant research projects going on right now at Kitt Peak much of it groundbreaking work.
“The largest telescope behind me, the 4-meter Mayall Telescope, is currently creating the largest, most detailed 3D map of the universe ever,” McMahon said.
They’re trying to better understanding the nature of dark energy by studying how the universe has expanded over time.
“Thirty million galaxies we’ve observed,” said Mayall Telescope Scientist Dick Joyce.
Joyce says they’re looking at about one-third of the night sky to create a 3D map of the universe. The DESI instrument focuses 4,000 individual fiber optic cables at the universe.
“This will tell us something about the phenomenon we call dark energy,” Joyce said. “Something we don’t know what it is, we just know that it exists.”
Kitt Peak is also home to a pair of Spacewatch telescopes helping to find any Near-Earth-Asteroids that could threaten our planet.
Plus, the 3.5 meter WIYN telescope is looking for other planets like ours, known as exoplanets.
“In 2020, we started using the NEID instrument,” said Optical Engineer Emily Hunting. “Neid is an Oodham word that means ‘to see or to seek’.”
They’re seeking Earth-size planets around Sun-like stars.
“Earth is the only place in the entire universe that we’re certain there’s life,” explained Hunting. “Our best guess at guessing where there might be something else is to look for another place that might be like Earth. We’re still a ways away from that but one of the first steps is to find things that look like they could be Earth.”
The future for Kitt Peak includes the repurposing of the McMath-Pierce Telescope as the Windows on the Universe Center for Astronomy.
“Turn it into essentially a functioning science center that has a telescope inside it,” McMahon said.
That telescope once studied the sun and the moon. Astronauts like Neil Armstrong came to Kitt Peak to look closely at the lunar surface.
The new Windows Center will feature exhibits under the massive inverted-V shaped telescope.
“It blurs the line between what is a telescope, what is an observatory, and what is a science center,” according to McMahon.
Another example of how Kitt Peak National Observatory is as much for their visitors as it is for the world’s top scientists.
McMahon says they are currently fundraising for the new science center.
They will also host a 60th anniversary of the visitors center on September 27. A limited number of tickets are available.