The Villanova Astronomy Department has been offered a unique opportunity to join the RCT Consortium. This is a consortium of 5 colleges that is in the final phase of a NASA funded 1.2 million dollar refurbishment of a major 50-inch (1.3 meter) telescope. This telescope is located on the site of Kitt Peak National Astronomical Observatory in southern Arizona.

This RCT telescope is a completely robotic telescope allowing remote observing. For this reason it is an extremely important instrument for teaching and research at a school like Villanova, where travel to off site facilities, especially during the school year, is not desirable.

The telescope itself is a state of the art optical telescope and is equipped with the latest in detecting and imaging technology. With this telescope, located at a fine site with many clear nights, we are able to carry out exciting new observations of many objects that are to faint to observe with our current telescopes. Such objects include protostars, novae, supernovae, black holes candidates, quasars, active galaxies, white dwarfs, and brown dwarfs.

Faculty and students utilize this telescope to enhance the undergraduate research experience and to augment our space based observations on a variety of existing and newly conceived teaching and research projects.