Kitt Peak in the context of "Coyote Mountains Wilderness (Arizona)"

The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, 88 kilometers (55 mi) west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than twenty optical and two radio telescopes, it is one of the largest gatherings of astronomical instruments in the Earth's northern hemisphere.

Kitt Peak National Observatory was founded in 1958. It is home to what was the largest solar telescope in the world, and many large astronomical telescopes of the late 20th century in the United States.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a scientific research instrument for conducting spectrographic astronomical surveys of distant galaxies. Its main components are a focal plane containing 5,000 fiber-positioning robots, and a bank of spectrographs which are fed by the fibers. The instrument enables an experiment to probe the expansion history of the universe and the mysterious physics of dark energy. The main DESI survey started in May 2021. DESI sits at an elevation of 6,880 feet (2,100 m), where it has been retrofitted onto the Mayall Telescope on top of Kitt Peak in the Sonoran Desert, which is located 55 miles (89 km) from Tucson, Arizona, US.

The instrument is operated by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under funding from the US Department of Energy's Office of Science. Construction of the instrument was principally funded by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science, and by other numerous sources including the US National Science Foundation, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, Mexico's National Council of Science and Technology, Spain's Ministry of Science and Innovation, by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, by the Heising-Simons Foundation, and by collaborating institutions worldwide.

The Víctor M. Blanco Telescope, also known as the Blanco 4m, is a 4-metre aperture telescope located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile on the summit of Mt. Cerro Tololo. Commissioned in 1974 and completed in 1976, the telescope is identical to the Mayall 4m telescope located on Kitt Peak. In 1995 it was dedicated and named in honour of Puerto Rican astronomer Víctor Manuel Blanco.It was the largest optical telescope in the Southern hemisphere from 1976 until 1998, when the first 8-metre telescope of the ESO Very Large Telescope opened.

Currently the main research instrument used at the telescope is the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), the camera used in the Dark Energy Survey. DECam saw its first light in September 2012.

The Quinlan Mountains is a mountain range in the U.S. state of Arizona. Its highest point is Kitt Peak at 6,883 feet (2,098 m), which is also the second-highest peak on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, after Baboquivari Peak. The range lies on the eastern end of the reservation about 55 miles (89 km) southwest of Tucson.

The Quinlan Mountains are north of the Baboquivari Mountains, the two ranges separated by the pass at the head of the Pavo Kug Wash. The Quinlan range also sits southwest of the Coyote Mountains, separated from them by the Pan Tak Pass. When George J. Roskruge created the official map of Pima County in 1893, he named the range after James Quinlin, who had opened a stagecoach station in the nearby town of Quinlin in 1884. Although the range had also been known as the Quinlin or Quinuin mountains at different points in history, Quinlan became the official name as a result of a decision by the Board on Geographic Names on April 16, 1941.