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23 June 2005: All of the major telescopes of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) on Kitt Peak are observing comet Tempel 1 for several nights before and after the planned Deep Impact event. Indeed, by the night of July 8, Kitt Peak National Observatory will have been used for 43 nights in 2005 in scientific support of the planned collision at approximately 10:52 p.m. local time on July 3 between the icy comet and a special probe released from the main Deep Impact spacecraft.

15 February 2005: Advance reservations are required for this free daytime program, which includes: a special tour of the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope (normally closed to public visitors), solar viewing, hands-on science activities, and talks by the director of Kitt Peak National Observatory and a leading cosmologist from the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory about Einstein’s continuing influence on astronomy. Einstein was born 126 years ago in Germany on March 14, 1879, so we will be having some early birthday cake in his honor as well!

11 January 2005: A significant number of red giant stars whose output varies on timescales as short as 10 minutes has been found in the nearby Ursa Minor dwarf galaxy by an astronomer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and a summer undergraduate student. This surprising variability occurs on a much shorter timescale than previously thought possible for such mature, giant stars.

5 October 2004: Astronomers using the Gemini North and Keck II telescopes have peered inside a violent binary star system to find that one of the interacting stars has lost so much mass to its partner that it has regressed to a strange, inert body resembling no known star type.

3 June 2004: New observations from the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope on Kitt Peak show striking visual evidence for a galaxy being stripped bare of its star-forming material by its violent ongoing encounter with the hot gas in the center of a galaxy cluster.

21 May 2004: Combining images from orbiting and ground-based telescopes, an international team of astronomers has located the eye of a cosmic hurricane: the source of the 1 million mile-per-hour winds that shower intergalactic space from the galaxy M82.

8 January 2004: Near the end of its lifetime, a star like the Sun ejects its outer layers into space, producing a hazy cloud of material called a planetary nebula. The complex shapes and dazzling colors of planetary nebulae make them some of the most popular objects in the night sky, for both amateur observing and scientific study.

16 September 2003: Case Western Reserve University astronomers have announced the discovery of a new galaxy, termed Andromeda VIII. The new galaxy is so widespread and transparent that astronomers did not suspect its existence until they mapped the velocity of stars thought to belong to the well-known and nearby large Andromeda spiral galaxy and found them to move independently of Andromeda.

9 January 2001: Astronomers surveying hundreds of red giant stars in more than a dozen globular star clusters have found clues that may reveal an unexpected origin of lithium, the third element in the Periodic Table.

8 January 2001: The simple spherical geometry of planetary nebula Abell 39 will help astronomers identify the source of very serious errors in measuring the chemical composition of dying stars.

1 June 1999: Dr. Mark Giampapa of the National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, has determined that the Sun is in a relatively moderate state of activity. Giampapa's observations of Sun-like stars in M67 suggest that about 40% of the time the Sun is likely to be either significantly more, or significantly less, active. A change to either of these states is likely to cause significant changes in the Earth's climate. These same observations also indicate excursions in the luminosity of the Sun from about 0.2% - 0.5% are possible, compared with the 0.1% variations that have been measured with modern satellite instruments during the 1980s and 1990s. Any variation in what is considered typical or normal solar activity must be taken into account in the study of long-term behavior of the global climate.

24 September 1998: October of 1998 marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), the first astronomy observatory in the U.S. available to all qualified astronomers regardless of institutional affiliation. Kitt Peak today is home to the world's largest collection of optical telescopes, under skies which continue to be some of the finest in the world for astronomical observations. Historical images and information on the excellence of scientific research at Kitt Peak can be found through a link on the KPNO Home Page at http://www.noao.edu/kpno/40th/.

17 June 1998: Samuel Barden, National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO) , has been awarded the 1998 Maria and Eric Muhlmann Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific . The Muhlmann Award is given for innovative advances in astronomical instrumentation, software, or observational infrastructure that enable significant astronomical discoveries. The award to Dr. Barden recognizes his pioneering use of optical fibers with astronomical spectrometers.