A building at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory.

Institutes, Groups and Facilities

Working together to advance research across the globe.

Internal facilities

Researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy have access to a wide range of modern instrumentation and facilities. Most of our internal facilities are located within Science B on campus. These facilities include:

The Radiation Oncology Group is situated in the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, while the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Group is housed at the Seaman Family MR Research Centre.

External facilities map

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The department's Astronomy and Astrophysics Group visit and utilize a range of national and international observatories.

Experimentalists in the Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics Group are involved in two of Canada's newest major atomic and molecular science installations, the Canadian Light Source (CLS) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and TRIUMF, Canada's National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Vancouver, British Columbia. Internationally, the facilities used by department members are CERN: the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, the facilities at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, the Control Engineering Laboratory at the University of Oulu, Finland, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasedena, California, United States of America.

The Auroral Imaging Group operates an array of ground-based instrumentation across Canada.

Researchers within the department's Environmental Physics and Isotope Science Group currently make use of the John de Laeter Centre for Isotope Research in Perth, Western Australia.

Members of the department's Space Physics Group use a number of national and international facilities including the Bristol Aerospace Ltd payload assembly and test facility in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the CSA David Florida Laboratory in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the Andoya Rocket Range in Andoya, Norway, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS) spacecraft assembly facility in Sagamihara, Japan, the Uchinoura Launch Facility, Kagoshima Space Center in Kagoshima, Japan, NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, United States of America, the NASA Poker Flat Research Range in Poker Flat, Alaska, United States of America., Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar in Poker Flat, Alaska, United States of America, and the Resolute Incoherent Scatter Radar in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Canada.