Two-Column Text and Image/Video
The Red Buttes Observatory (RBO) was constructed in 1994 as the second research observatory at the University of Wyoming (UW). Located at 2,240 m elevation, the observatory lies 15 km south of Laramie, Wyoming at 41.1763° N, 105.5741° W. Its 0.6 m f/8.43 Ritchey-Chrétien Cassegrain telescope was constructed and installed by the Colorado-based company DFM Engineering, Inc (DFM). It is used every clear night of the year for science and student training.
RBO's Mission
RBO began operation with the mission of enriching the undergraduate astronomy curriculum with practical experiences in observation. Successful research projects have included prototyping new instrumentation, measuring eclipsing binary distances to star forming regions, and followup confirmation of gamma-ray bursts.
Nightly Use
The observatory operates in a remote or automated fashion most of the time. Remote and automated observing is documented in a publication by student D. Kasper et al. 2016. Publications based on data from RBO can be found in this list of scientific publications from RBO.Cameras
RBO is equipped with either a 40962 imaging camera (9 micron pixels, Kodak 16803 chip, 25' field-of-view) in a Finger Lakes Instruments ProLine housing or a 10242 imaging camera (13 micron pixels, e2v CCD 47-10, 9.2' field-of-view) in a Finger Lakes Instruments microline housing.
Filters
The telescope has an 8-position filter wheel accepting 2" square filters. The filter complement currently includes Johnson UBV and Bessel RI filters.
RBO Photos
Red Buttes Observatory at night.
Two undergraduates who use RBO.
Drone view of RBO.
Student operators of RBO.
Light curves of two brown dwarfs reported in a discovery paper by UW undergraduate Xander Larsen (2025).
