General Information

Where is Brookhaven?

Brookhaven National Laboratory is located in Suffolk County on Long Island, a 120-mile-long island directly east of New York City. The Lab's 5,265-acre site is near the island's geographic center. The Lab is located in the township of Brookhaven, and has its own post office designation, Upton. The zip code is 11973-5000. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider or RHIC (top, center) can easily be seen from an aerial view of Brookhaven National Laboratory (CN9-97-98) which is 2.4 miles in circumference, and dominates Brookhaven's 5,265-acre campus. From Space, the Collider ring can be seen as a small round white circle on the top left of this satellite image. From above, Long Island looks like a giant fish, with a forked tail on the "East End" -- the North Fork is rural, and the South Fork has many famous "Hamptons" resort towns. The Peconic Bay and Shelter Island are between the forks. Brookhaven is 15 miles to the west of the forks, and about 60 miles east of New York City.

What does Brookhaven do?

The Lab is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's multidisciplinary research laboratories, and is dedicated to basic, non-defense scientific research. You'll often hear the Department of Energy referred to as DOE. Brookhaven is operated by Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), a not-for-profit research company founded by the Battelle Memorial Institute and the Research Foundation of the State University of New York on behalf of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. About 3,000 people work here, and more than 4,000 others visit each year for days, weeks, or months to perform scientific research or attend conferences. To learn more about what the Laboratory is all about, explore the Brookhaven home page.

One of the strongest recommendations anyone can make about coming to Brookhaven for a visitor is to bring a car. The Lab has many amenities, but not everything you'll need, and the nearest stores and towns are several miles away. Please note that the inclusion of a commercial establishment such as a restaurant doesn't indicate an endorsement by the Laboratory.

BNL Links

Long Island Links

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