Department of Astronomy

The Space Astronomy Laboratory (SAL) is a unit of the Astronomy Department at the the University of Wisconsin - Madison. SAL designs and builds instruments for the Department of Astronomy. These instruments help the Astronomy Department's faculty to do research in both space-based and ground-based astronomy.

Current space research includes

• the FUSP sounding rocket, a non-imaging, far ultraviolet, rocket-borne polarimeter
• the mighty Star Tracker 5000, part of a sounding rocket control system that performs yaw-pitch-roll control of sub-orbital rockets, autonomous attitude determination, and Progressive Image Transmission for low-bandwidth imaging from space

Ground-based projects and facilities include

• Robert Stobie Spectrograph (RSS, formerly PFIS) at the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT)
• Near Infrared addition to the RSS
• Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper, a survey instrument formerly at KPNO, now at CTIO
• WIYN High Resolution Infrared Camera
• Half-wave Polarimeter at Pine Bluff Observatory
• Space Place outreach facility.
• WIYN 3.5m Telescope, a major research telescope at KPNO
• Pine Bluff Observatory, a teaching and research observatory located near Madison
• Progressive Image Transmission (PIT), a low-bandwidth image channel from rockets and satellites
• UW Space Place, a public outreach and educational facility

Past research in space has included

• experiments on X-15s
• the OAO satellite, a far-ultraviolet observatory launched in 1968.
• the High Speed Photometer (one of the five original Hubble instruments)
• the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE), flown on the Astro-1 (1990) and Astro-2 (1995) Shuttle payloads,
• the Wide Field Imaging Survey Polarimeter (WISP), a sounding rocket experiment

For comments or information about this site please contact the SAL webmaster.