Demonstration of Wallace Astrophysical Observatory's 24-inch telescope upgrade

As part of an ongoing effort to renovate the George R. Wallace Astrophysical Observatory, a new control system and imaging instrument were implemented for the 24-inch telescope. A redesigned telescope drive mechanism and an adaptation of the Lowell Observatory MOVE control system were installed to automate telescope operations. The telescope optics were configured to an f/15 Cassegrain with a resolution of 1 arcsecond, and a large-format commercial CCD detector was installed. The optical configuration gave a pixel scale of 0.55 arcseconds/pixel, covering a field of 0.220 across the diagonal of the detector. As a demonstration of the upgraded system, photometric and astrometric measurements were made to an accuracy of 0.1 magnitudes and better than 1 arcsecond, respectively, under poor atmospheric conditions.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Janet P., 1978-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• James P. Elliot and David J. Osip.

• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/57765

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/57765