Of the 23 campuses in the California State University system, SDSU is the only one with a Department of Astronomy, and as such the only campus to offer both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Astronomy. The Department is actively engaged in research projects in which students are encouraged to participate under the direction of its eight faculty. The Department provides excellent research and instructional facilities with its Mount Laguna Observatory, CCD Laboratory, extensive computer network, and dedicated engineering/support staff.

Our graduates typically go on to obtain employment in industry (aerospace, electronics, computer programming), in research positions (observatories, NASA mission support), in teaching (community colleges, high schools, planetaria), or to further their education by entering Ph.D. programs elsewhere.

Mount Laguna Observatory (MLO) was dedicated on June 19, 1968 (C.E. Smith & Burt Nelson, 1969 Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac. 81, 74) in conjunction with the Summer meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, which was hosted by the SDSU Astronomy Department. The dedication occurred only seven years after the Astronomy Department became a separate entity on the SDSU campus. Initial funding for MLO came from the National Science Foundation in the form of grants to founding Chair of the Department (late Clifford Smith) and Observatory Director (Emeritus Director Burt Nelson) for the study of eclipsing binary stars, with matching funds also supplied by the State of California.

The Observatory is located forty-five miles east of downtown San Diego, at an altitude of 6100 ft. (1859 meters) on the remote eastern edge of the Cleveland National Forest. MLO is well protected from the urban lighting of the San Diego metropolitan area. This remoteness, along with the high percentage of clear nights and excellent seeing, makes Mount Laguna one of the best overall observatory sites in the continental United States. MLO has grown to include four well-equipped telescopes, ranging in size from 16- to 40-inches (0.4- to 1.0-meters), which are used for original research by the faculty and students of both SDSU and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. High-speed Internet connectivity to transmit data in near-real time is provided to MLO by the High Performance Research and Education Network (HPWREN) through a grant from the National Science Foundation to H-W Braun at the University of California, San Diego (NSF: ANI-0087344). A new 40-inch telescope (ULTRA) employing Carbon Composite Technology for the mirrors and optical tube assembly is being designed to replace the current 16-inch telescope. ULTRA is a collaborative effort between SDSU, The University of Kansas (KU), Composite Mirror Applications (Tucson, AZ), and Dartmouth College, with funding provided by the National Science Foundation. ULTRA will be run remotely, and then robotically, via HPWREN from the campuses of SDSU and KU. The Observatory has plans to build a 100-inch (2.5-meter) class Large Robotic Telescope for SDSU's second century, and is actively seeking private funds to start the project; a "naming-gift" opportunity is available.

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