Telescopes and Observatories

Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO) Telescopes

NRC operates two optical telescopes located on 230-m high Little Saanich Mountain, 17 km north of Victoria, B.C.

With continual upgrading, the 1.8-m Plaskett Telescope (1918) remains highly productive. It was used during its first two decades of its life to measure accurately the size and mass of the Milky Way galaxy. Today, among many programmes, it is used to determine orbits of asteroids that might strike the Earth.

The 1.2-m McKellar Telescope (1962) is used for precision analyses of the properties of stars and pioneered development of techniques to find planets around nearby stars.