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 Chandra allows scientists from around the world to obtain unprecedented X-ray images of exotic environments to help understand the structure and evolution of the universe. Already surpassing its five-year life, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is rewriting textbooks and helping advance technology. So far it is the worlds most powerful X-ray telescope.
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 Swift Image Swift is a first-of-its-kind multi-wavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma-ray burst (GRB) science. Its three instruments work together to observe GRBs and their afterglows at gamma-ray, X-ray, ultraviolet (UV), and optical wavelengths.
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 The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is the world's third largest optical telescope. The telescope is a collaboration between the University of Texas at Austin, The Pennsylvania State University, and Stanford University in the United States and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, and Goerg-August-Universitaet Goettingen in Germany.
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Dan Larson addresses the inauguration luncheon
A little over five years after groundbreaking, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki officially opened the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) on November 10 2005. SALT is the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, and equal to the largest in the world. 2005 has been the year when SALT began to reach its potential.
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 The
Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) experiment flew up at the edge
of space and set new records for duration and distance. CREAM is
designed to explore the supernova acceleration limit of cosmic rays,
the relativistic gas of protons, electrons and heavy nuclei arriving at
Earth from outside the solar system. This flight also demonstrated the
capabilites of the NASA Ultra-Long Duration Balloon (ULDB) support
system. CREAM circumnavigated the south pole three times during the
first flight, which set a flight duration record of 42 days. A
cumulative duration of 70 days within 13 months was achieved when the
second flight completed 28 days during two circumnavigations of the
continent. The 3rd flight preparation is in progress.
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 IceCube is a one-cubic-kilometer international high-energy neutrino observatory being built and installed in the clear deep ice below the South Pole Station and is scheduled to be completed in 2011. This is done by surounding the AMANDA experiment with IceCube detectors. This year alone they have doubled the size of the instrument installed thus far. Building upon the technology of AMANDA, IceCube is in search of neutrinos from the most violent astrophysical sources. IceCube has now joined the race to discover supersymmetric particles and the topological defects created in grand unified phase transitions in the early universe.
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The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Array |
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 High energy cosmic rays are a rarity that is being studied with the help of the Pierre Auger Ray Array. The higher the energy level of a cosmic ray the rarer the occurance. To view these rays a big array of sensors was created. When completed there will be 1600 different surface detectors to monitor 3000 square kilometers. At the same time as the ground sensors collect data an optical detector records atmospheric fluorescence light. With observatories in both hemispheres, the Auger collaboration will have the opportunity to view cosmic rays across the entire sky. One site is now being constructed in Mendoza, Argentina and the second will be located in Utah's Millard County, south of Delta and west of Fillmore. By learning more about these high energy cosmic rays researchers hope to be able to learn where they come from and how they are created.
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 Penn State is a partner organization in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will be the next major leap forward in charting the optical sky. The LSST is a planned 8.4-meter, 10 square-degree-field telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint astronomical objects across the entire sky.
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 Penn State researchers have found that by looking into space and observing the different wavelengths of objects such as stars and galaxies we can better determine the properties and characteristics of these items as well as leanr more about their structures.
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Penn State is a partner organization in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will be the next major leap forward in charting the optical sky. The LSST is a planned 8.4-meter, 10 square-degree-field telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint astronomical objects across the entire sky. It will be built in northern Chile at the superb site of Cerro Pachon.
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