0.8 m Telescope

Telescope Safety and Operating Information

The 0.8 meter telescope is currently not available for use.    The following is retained, and provided, for archival reasons.

One of the 0.8 meter Telescope's greatest advantages is its field of view. The telescope can observe a patch on the sky that is three-quarters of one degree across (the full moon is about one-half of a degree across). With this capability, the 0.8-meter Telescope is ideal for large search and survey projects.

The system is a hybrid, designed for local (in the dome), remote (via a network), and autonomous (robotic) operation.  It uses a distributed motion control system, including high-precision servo motors, absolute optical encoders, and multi-axis digital motion controllers on the RA/HA and DEC axis.  Both axes are steel-on-steel friction drives, utilizing a servo drive equipped with a hardened steel drive capstan, which directly engages a hardened steel drive roller.  This is a zero-backlash drive design, capable of precision motion accurate to within 50nm.  

The telescope control system (TCS) is based on an open-systems solution, known as Talon.  Talon is written in C and a scripting module system used to integrate motion control devices.  The TCS supports full dome auto (the dome is encoded), planetarium-based, multi-catalog pointing (based on the open-systems XEphemeris), and uses a mesh-grid, high-precision pointing model that is continuously refined and extensible.

Telescope Parameters
 

Instruments

f/3.0 focus

• Prime Focus Corrector (PFC)

Observer Information 

• 0.8 m Cautions