SFA Observatory, about 17 kilometers north of Nacogdoches, Texas, opened in 1976 under Stephen F. Austin State University as both a teaching observatory and a research facility. Its 0.46-meter Ritchey–Chrétien reflector has operated there since opening and previously stood on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where NASA used it for Apollo-related lunar studies. A larger 1.04-meter reflecting telescope, built at the university from components made in the early 1960s for an unfinished University of Texas–Pan American telescope, entered service in 1984. Used mainly for photoelectric photometry, these optical instruments and the two-dish SFA Very Small Array provide practical scientific training and support research.