“Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.”
–Georg C. Lichtenberg

Astronomy – Physics is Proud of:

• Great Resources
• Great Community Outreach
• Great Equipment

Great Resources

• Strength teaching lower-division General Education courses in Astronomy & Physics
• Reserach opportunities for upper-division students
• Reserach programs at the Henry R. Barber Research Observatory:
  • Long-term monitoring of Be Stars
  • The Bright Star Spectroscopic Catalog
  • A monitoring program for the star Epsilon Aurigae
  • Monitoring Supernova Impostors (National Science Foundation Grant)

Great Community Outreach

• A resource science teachers in Central Illinois
• Star Parties
• Disability-friendly support
• Community updates of astronomical phenomena

Great Equipment

UIS’s astronomy program possesses astronomical research and teaching equipment that is among the finest in the state of Illinois and the best for a public institution of our size in any state:

• 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope
• 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope
• 8-inch Newtonian telescope
• 8-inch disability-friendly fixed-focal point telescope
• 3-inch comet telescope

The Henry R. Barber Research Observatory, 25 miles from the campus, includes:

• 20-inch Cassegrain focus telescope
  (for spectroscopy)
• 16-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (for photometry)
• Echelle spectrograph
• Diffraction-grating spectrograph
• Photometric equipment
• New U42 wide-field CCD Camera