Operating in coincidence to reject noise, it is expected that these interferometers will discover gravitational radiation from astrophysical sources. Caltech graduate students in astronomy use all of these instruments in their research, as well as the national facilities such as the VLA and Arecibo radio telescopes, telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory , and various NASA facilities, including the Hubble Space Telescope . Close proximity to all this observational activity inspires a vibrant Theoretical Astrophysics group . This comprises 4 faculty, plus about 10 postdoctoral fellows and a dozen graduate students. Interests range from the theory of interstellar turbulence and stellar oscillations to the physics of neutron stars, black holes, active galactic nuclei, accretion disks and cosmology.
Computational facilities are no less impressive.
The Caltech astronomy department supports a network of about 100 workstations. Admitted students are guaranteed financial support, and are not required to work for a sponsoring faculty member. Caltech is a private university, with no relation to the University of California system. There is therefore no difference in the financial support of California natives, U.S. citizens,and non-citizens. These confer status and lighten the load on our grants.