United States of America

Last Updated: March 30th, 2012

Below you will find links to a collegiate-based astronomy map of the United States. On the map, when you move your cursor over a symbol, information about that institution will pop up. If you click on the symbol, then a new browser tab or window will appear with the webpage of the featured department.

Dots denote the 76 departments in U.S. colleges and universities which were designated by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center in 2009 as being "degree-granting astronomy departments". Red, green and blue dots denote departments which grant degrees up to the level of PhD, Masters and Bachelors, respectively. Purple squares denote 90 other colleges and university departments which teach dedicated astronomy courses and perform astronomy research that were not on the AIP list. If you have more suggestions for squares, please let me know (dimitri [dot] veras [at] colorado [dot] edu).

Dots and squares provide information about 1) the title of the university or college, 2) the name of the department, and 3) the city in which the department resides, including an estimate of the city's population. Dot symbols provide additional information: 1) introductory course enrollment totals for students who took their first term of introductory astronomy, 2) the number of Juniors and Seniors which have declared majors in the subject, and 3) the number of graduate students in this discipline. This additional information represents the 2009 annual snapshot taken directly from the AIP Statistical Research Center from the results of their survey. Any squares with this additional information indicates that these numbers were provided to me directly by a faculty member from that department. Any information below a dashed line relays qualifications to the published data that were provided to me.

The underlying map is a freely available county-and-equivalent-statistical-area map from the United States Census Bureau. The locations of all symbols are approximate, and some are offset from their true locations so that no two overlap, especially in crowded regions such as Massachusetts and Los Angeles.

In order to view the map correctly, use a laptop or desktop with the latest version (as of August 1st, 2011) of Firefox, Chrome or Safari. This is likely to work. Other platform/browser combinations are unlikely to work.

I hope this map is useful!
-Dimitri

COMPLETE FIREFOX MAP
DOTS-ONLY FIREFOX MAP
RED DOTS-ONLY FIREFOX MAP

COMPLETE CHROME MAP
DOTS-ONLY CHROME MAP
RED DOTS-ONLY CHROME MAP

COMPLETE SAFARI MAP
DOTS-ONLY SAFARI MAP
RED DOTS-ONLY SAFARI MAP