The SAO Telescope Data Center supports scheduling and astronomical observations on the optical telescopes of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: the Whipple and MMT Observatories on Mt. Hopkins in Arizona, and the Magellan Telescopes on Cerro Las Campanas in Chile.

We record and archive most observations on the telescopes on Mount Hopkins and reduce and analyze data from spectrographs on those telescopes, producing redshifts for galaxies and radial velocities for stars. We develop and support computer software which helps scientists prepare for their observations, runs the instruments on the telescopes, reduces data to usable forms, and extracts star and galaxy velocities from spectra and positional information from images. Our web site provides full documentation of locally-developed software, access to some of our archived data, and results of some of the surveys we have supported.

For information on the services provided, click on one of the topics in the menu on the left.