Traditionally, the Wise Observatory Director is appointed by Tel Aviv University's Dean of Exact Sciences from the senior academic staff of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

A project to monitor photometrically and spectroscopically Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) is still running, following about 30 years of data collection.

Other major projects include searches for supernovae and extrasolar planets (transiting or lensing), and investigations of star formation processes in galaxies through wide and narrow-band filter imaging.

Moreover, another 8 minor planets were discovered at the Wise Observatory, but are now credited to the individual astronomers such as David Polishook (see adjunct table and footnotes).

A dioptric focal reducer (Maala) was used at f/7 to project a field of view almost one-degree wide on one of the CCDs (a SITe 2048x4096 pixel array) at the cost of slightly larger than optimal PSF sampling and some edge-of-field distortions.

A new CCD camera entered regular use in 2006: it is a Princeton Instruments Versarray with 1340×1300 pixels each 20 μm wide, with a peak quantum efficiency of 95% and good response in the blue part of the spectrum.

This camera is composed of four 4096x4096 pixel non-butted Fairchild CCDs that are thick and front-illuminated, thus have a response peaking in the red with approximately 42% quantum efficiency.

A 46 centimeters (18 inches) prime-focus computer-controlled telescope was added to the Wise Observatory in 2005[1][6] mainly for minor planet CCD photometry purposes and funded by the Israel Space Agency as part of a National Knowledge Center on Near Earth Objects.

Over the years, most of the observing time during a given period has been allocated to one or two large, long-term, projects carried out by Tel Aviv faculty and graduate students.