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Astronomy

Facilities/Maps

Location

The UF Astronomy department is located in the Bryant Space Science Center building at the corner of Stadium Drive and Fletcher Drive across from the International Center. You can find a campus map below. The department office is located in room 211 on the second floor and various faculty and student offices can be found on floors 2, 3 and 4. See the department’s personnel directory for a listing of faculty and office numbers

Nearby Airports

There are four airports that serve central Florida: Gainesville, Jacksonville (1.5 hours from Gainesville), Tampa (2 hours), and Orlando (2 hours). American Eagle, Delta, United and US Airways airlines serve the Gainesville airport with connections through Miami, Atlanta, Tampa or Charlotte, respectively. Most major airlines fly into those other airports. All are within an easy hour or two drive of Gainesville. Silver Airways, a regional carrier, flies to and from Tampa and from Orlando.

Department Facilities

On-site Facilities

Our department has three on-site observatories:

Computing Facilities

The University of Florida provides access to researches across many fields to use HiPerGator, the university supercomputer.

Off-site Facilities

Our Department of Astronomy operates the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS in partnership with Spain and Mexico through the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Instituto de Astronomía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México y del Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica de Puebla.

Collaborating Facilities

Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (2008–2014)

  • SDSS-III (opens in new tab)
  • BOSS (opens in new tab) focused on mapping the Universe on the largest scales, creating the largest volume three-dimensional map of galaxies to date and measuring the scale of the Universe to one percent.
  • SEGUE-2 (opens in new tab) is mapping the structure, kinematics, and chemical evolution of the outer Milky Way disk and halo.
  • APOGEE (opens in new tab) used high-resolution infrared spectroscopy to see through the dust to the inner Galaxy.
  • MARVELS (opens in new tab) surveyed the radial velocity variations of 11,000 bright stars to provide data for extrasolar gas giant planets with orbital periods from a few hours to two years.