Facilities

The University has a purpose-built teaching observatory, north east of the city. The main building includes a teaching room with planetarium, an optics lab and dark rooms. We run optional weekends here for our distance learning students, and laboratory classes for the on-campus students. Also on site is the historic Wilfred Hall Telescope and the Multi-Aperture Telescope.

The Centre for Astrophysics are founder members of the United Kingdom partnership in the Southern African Large Telescope. This is the largest aperture optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, and is currently having instrumentation commissioned. Sited at the South African Astronomical Observatory (our partners in South Africa) it can take advantage of the excellent observing conditions. Professor Gordon Bromage of the CFA was the original chair of the UK consortium, leading and negotiating our arrangements with SAAO and the South African government.

The University of Central Lancashire owns and operates a 24-node parallel processor high performance computer. Operating with shared memory and rapid data sharing the facility allows us to simulate complex physical systems, from nanomaterials to the galaxy clusters. In the future those going on to complete the BSc(Hons) Astronomy degree may make use of this facility in their final dissertation.