The Mount Palomar observatory is an outstanding facility, as is the 10-meter Keck telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Graduate teaching assistants are assigned duties requiring a total of 15 hours per week during the academic year. Additional financial support is also available for graduate teaching assistants to continue their research during the summer. Graduate research assistants work on various research projects for 15 hours per week during the academic year and 30 hours per week during the summer. All students receive a special award to cover tuition.
Housing is also available in the residential areas that surround the campus.
There are about 135 graduate students in physics and about 30 in astronomy, all of whom are receiving financial support. There are more than 19,000 Institute alumni around the world, many of whom are eminent in their fields of science and engineering. Twenty-six alumni are recipients of the Nobel Prize. Location Pasadena, a city of approximately 140,000 inhabitants, is located 10 miles northeast of Los Angeles and 30 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. The city contains both residential and light industrial areas.