Nordic Optical Telescope

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Looking down on the dome of the Nordic Optical Telescope, with the Atlantic Ocean behind.

The Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) is an astronomical telescope located at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma in the Canary Islands. First light came in 1988, with regular observing beginning in 1989. It is funded by Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland. Access is provided to astronomers of all nationalities through internation time allocation committees.

The NOT was the first major telescope facility to use active optics to correct the shape of a thin, lightweight primary mirror.

The NOT is a 2.56m telescope with the following instrumentation:

• ALFOSC -- CCD (visible light) faint object spectrograph and 4 Megapixel camera
• NOTCam -- 1 Megapixel HgCdTe Hawaii infrared camera and spectrograph
• MOSCA -- 16 Megapixel CCD camera
• SOFIN -- High resolution CCD spectrograph (up to R=170000)
• StanCam -- Stand-by 1 Megapixel CCD camera
• LuckyCam -- High frame rate, low noise L3Vision CCD camera for lucky imaging
• TURPOL -- UBVRI Photopolarimeter

The service building and dome of Nordic Optical Telescope situated above the clouds at the top of Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma.

The interior of the telescope, showing an instrument on the Cassegrain focus

External links

• not.iac.es (http://www.not.iac.es) - official site.es:Telescopio Óptico Nórdico

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