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Moore Observatory is located within the University of Louisville's 200-acre Horner Wildlife Refuge in Oldham County, Kentucky.
Named for Walter Lee Moore, a professor who taught mathematics and astronomy from 1929 to 1967, the facility was dedicated in November 1978. Currently it is the site of three optical telescopes for remote and automated research by faculty and students, and one for visitors to see the night sky and daytime Sun visually. It also hosts services for remote access and data acquisition from telescopes in Arizona and Australia.
The road to the observatory leads through forests and fields of surrounding nature preserve, past a Babbit family 19th century graveyard, a research site for the University's biology department, to the high point where a pear orchard once stood.
The main building at the observatory has office, maintenance, and operator space for the telescopes on site, and control systems to make telescopes remotely accessible.
It is often a roost for a colony of vultures.
The main building served as engineering test for water-based solar heating and cooling and its steep south-facing roof with flying butressed held panels that circulated water to tanks in its basement. The technology demonstration was successful, but not maintainable long term. The butress features were removed, and now the building is heated and cooled by a heat pump with power from Louisville Gas & Electric.
In spite of its isolation, the site has gigabit Ethernet service to the main campus that enables effective remote operation.
MORC is 24-inch (0.6-meter) Ritchie-Chretien research telescope manufactured by RC Optical Systems and installed in August 2006.
Its 62 mega-pixel 16-bit low-noise camera and Sloan filter set is used for precision measurements to determine the properties of extra solar planets in collaboration with the NASA TESS mission.
CDK20N in a Sirius dome was added to the observatory to provide students with remotely accessible live views of the sky, and its twin is CDK20S at Mt. Kent in Australia. It is an early version of the Planewave CDK20, a 0.5 meter corrected Dall-Kirkham telescope. Currently it has a Baader Baches echelle spectrograph for bright star spectroscopy.
The Azari 0.5-meter Ritchie-Chretien research telescope was the engineering prototype for MORC. It was donated to the University by Dan Azari in 2019 and is housed in our our Roll Roof building. The telescope has a unique fast slewing altitude-azimuth mounting and is used for study near-Earth objects and satellites.
The Lily garden and its Star dome feature a 15 cm aperture Takahashi apochromatic refractor that offers stunning views of the Moon, major planets, star clusters and nebulae to night visitors, and with a solar filter is ideal for showing the Sun in detail during the day.
While due to staffing and time limitations we cannot host visitors, students are encouraged to inquire about courses and research opportunities. Archival data is available, and we welcome inquiries about collaborative research. See Shared Skies for more information.
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