United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)
A 3.8-meter telescope that is the world's largest dedicated solely to infrared
astronomy. It opened in 1979, is sited near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii,
at an altitude of 4,194 m, and operates at wavelengths between 1 and 30
microns. In 2002, it was equipped with a revolutionary new spectrometer,
the UKIRT Imaging Spectrometer (UIST), that can effectively slice any celestial
object into sections and so produce a three-dimensional view of the conditions
throughout entire galaxies, for example, in a single observation. UKIRT
is owned by the U.K. Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and
operated along with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope by the staff of the
Joint Astronomy Centre.
Related
entry
• Mauna
Kea observatories
Related category
• OBSERVATORIES
AND TELESCOPES
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