ann24024 — Announcement

Media Advisory: Invitation to Media Day at Kitt Peak National Observatory

Arizona media are invited to Kitt Peak Visitor Center’s 60th Birthday Celebration with 1964 prices on 27 September 2024

9 September 2024

The Visitor Center at the U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory is celebrating its 60th anniversary! To help bring news of this momentous occasion to the public, we invite the media to take part in a Media Day at Kitt Peak on Friday 27 September from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Media will have exclusive access to facilities and interviews with the people leading and working at Kitt Peak, as well as representatives of the Tohono O’odham Nation. A common briefing will occur at 10 a.m., which will offer an opportunity to hear and ask questions about the history of the Kitt Peak Visitor Center, the Visitor Center’s strategy in the past and going forward, and the cultural connections that the Tohono O’odham Nation have to the observatory and the mountain.

After the briefing participants will branch out to individual experiences and interviews. Throughout the day media will be able to participate in exclusive, personalized, behind-the-scenes tours on the mountain and conduct interviews with key staff, such as the Director of Mid-scale Observatories and the Visitor Center Operations Manager.

There will also be an opportunity for select media to participate in two of the Visitor Center’s most popular nighttime programs: the Nightly Observing Program, the Dark Sky Discovery Program and the Overnight Telescope Observing Program. After being treated to dinner, participants will have a chance to see some of the observatory’s telescopes in action and experience the night sky from one of the best locations for astronomy in the world.

To express interest in participating in the Media Day, and to reserve a slot in either of the nighttime programs, please fill out this form by 20 September.

This is the first substantial opportunity that the media has had to visit Kitt Peak after the observatory underwent a series of challenges. With the COVID pandemic beginning in 2020, followed by the Contreras Fire that threatened the facilities on the mountain in 2022, visits to the mountain have been significantly limited for over three years. Kitt Peak and the Visitor Center are excited to officially invite the media back for the first time since reopening in 2023.

As part of the 60th anniversary celebration, all day- and evening tours on 27 September will be priced as in 1964: Daytime Tours for the public will be free all day and evening tours will start at $7.50.

With a view stretching 160 kilometers (100 miles) to all sides, Kitt Peak is an excellent place to experience Arizona’s monsoon weather and witness the changing climate first hand. With temperatures being consistently more than 10 degrees C (20 degrees F) cooler at Kitt Peak, the public is encouraged to come up and beat the heat.

If you have any questions please visit our media visits page or contact us using the information below. We look forward to seeing you there!

More information

NSF NOIRLab (U.S. National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), the U.S. center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the International Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and Vera C. Rubin Observatory (operated in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. The astronomical community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on I’oligam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that these sites have to the Tohono O’odham Nation, to the Native Hawaiian community, and to the local communities in Chile, respectively.