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Research Facilities

Progress in astronomy depends on ever-more-powerful telescopes and instruments. At the University of Delaware, we have access to national astronomy assets funded by NASA and NSF. We are now a member of the SMARTS consortium, giving us guaranteed access to telescopes in Chile. Below are described some of the facilities I have been using to study cool stars and brown dwarfs.

Space Observatories

	Hubble Space Telescope Orbiting high above the interference of Earth's atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is the premier ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared astronomical telescope.  Its high resolution allows apparently single stars to be identified as close doubles.  We have used HST to image Hyades cluster M dwarfs, field M dwarfs, and metal-poor M subdwarfs.  Most recently, we have found that 20% of L dwarfs are doubles with separations in the range 1.5-15 A.U.   We also obtained the first-ever ultraviolet spectrum of a brown dwarf using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS).
	Spitzer Space Telescope Spitzer Space Telescope is the most power mid-infrared telescope ever. We are using it to study disks around very young brown dwarfs. We are also using it to study the puzzling mid-infrared excess of active M dwarfs (also known as dMe stars).
	Chandra X-ray Telescope We used the Chandra telescope to study a 10-million year old brown dwarf. This 25 jupiter-mass brown dwarf shows strong H alpha emission, characteristic of a strong chomosphere or an active accretion disk.
	Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) We are using the FUSE satellite to study the interacting winds of a massive binary in the Small Magellenic Cloud.

Ground-Based Observatories

	Gemini Telescopes The new 8-meter Gemini telescopes are the flagship of the national observatories. Using the very high resolution Phoenix spectrograph, we are using Gemini-South to take 2.25 micron spectra of brown dwarfs.    In conjunction with existing low-resolution spectra, we will able to measure the temperatures and understand the atmospheres of these cool objects.
	SMARTS The SMARTS consortium operates the 0.9m, 1.0m, 1.3m, and 1.5m telescopes at CTIO in Chile. We are using these telescopes to observe cool stars, brown dwarfs, and white dwarfs.
	National Optical Astronomical Observatories The Kitt Peak and CTIO telescopes are the workhorses of our program. We use them to follow-up sources from 2MASS.
	CorMASS  CorMASS is a low-resolution near-infrared spectrograph that observes the ZJHK bandpasses. It is ideal for confirming brown dwarfs with only a small telescope.

Vitual Observatories

	The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS)  2MASS surveyed the entire sky in the near-infrared. It is a rich source of new nearby stars and brown dwarfs.
	The Rosat All-Sky Survey Catalog  The ROSAT All-Sky Survey has cataloged X-ray sources. It is a source of new, nearby young stars. The stars spin rapidly, generating magnetic fields which lead to hot coronae.

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