National Solar Observatory


The National Solar Observatory is a United States public research institute to advance the knowledge of the physics of the Sun. NSO studies the Sun both as an astronomical object and as the dominant external influence on Earth.
NSO is headquartered in Boulder and operated facilities at two locations, at Sacramento Peak near Sunspot in New Mexico, and at Kitt Peak in Arizona until the end of fiscal year 2017. The institute constructed the 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in the Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui.
NSO provides its observations to the scientific community. It operates facilities, develops advanced instrumentation both in-house and through partnerships, conducts solar research, and carries out educational and public outreach.

Visiting the observatories

The National Solar Observatory HQ is located on the campus of the University of Colorado, Boulder. It also has some staff on Sacramento Peak, where visitors are welcome during the daytime. The observatory lies in New Mexico at the southern end of NM Scenic Byway 6563, about south of Cloudcroft, and southeast from Alamogordo, in the village of Sunspot inside of the Lincoln National Forest. Sunspot is an unincorporated community in the Sacramento Mountains in Otero County. The nearby nighttime observatory, Apache Point Observatory, is not open to the public.

Telescopes operated by the observatory

Sacramento Peak

The Sacramento Peak facilities are located in Sunspot, New Mexico. The site's name was chosen by the late James C. Sadler,, an internationally noted meteorologist and professor at The University of Hawaii, formerly with the United States Air Force on assignment during the early inception of the observatory.
For the Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, NSO enlisted the cooperation of various groups in the Citizen CATE experiment to set up more than 60 identical telescopes along the eclipse path, to produce 90 continuous minutes of images, 10 seconds apart, of the Sun's inner corona. This was to provide a clearer understanding of solar plumes and other transient phenomena.