Submillimeter Telescope

The Submillimeter Telescope, formerly known as the Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope, is a submillimetre-wavelength radio telescope on Mount Graham, in Graham County, Arizona. It is a 10-metre parabolic dish housed in a building that protects it from bad weather, the front doors and roof of which are opened when the telescope is in use. Its construction was finished in 1993. It is one of the telescopes making up the Mount Graham International Observatory, and, along with the 12 Meter Telescope on Kitt Peak, is maintained by the Arizona Radio Observatory, a division of Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. The dryness of the air around and above Mount Graham matters for extremely high frequency radio and far-infrared observation, where water vapour and cloud strongly attenuate the waves; the telescope is used nine to ten months of the year and is stowed when atmospheric water vapour is too high, chiefly in summer.

Where it is

Submillimeter Telescope is a observatory near Safford, in Graham County. It is one of the observatories in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

No official visitor count is published for Submillimeter Telescope, so its score rests on public interest and tourism significance, and is capped below the level a measured attraction can reach. That is why the medium confidence above is not higher. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Note on the data: No official visitor count is published for this attraction.

Mentioned in

• Arizona protects its night sky in one set of places and uses it in another — Eight Arizona attractions hold International Dark Sky Park status and all eight publish visitor counts; twelve working observatories publish none.

Sources

• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikidata(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates
• Official site: http://aro.as.arizona.edu(opens in a new tab)

Record last verified 2026-08-12.