Telescope Specifications

  • Aperture: 3.0 meters

  • Cassegrain Secondary: Provides f/35 beam at the Cassegrain Focus (1.95"/mm). Can be ocsillated up to 40 Hz and a maximum throw of 6' (Note: Image degraadation occurs at the highest throw). Position angle of the throw can be adjusted continuously +/- 90 deg.from the N–S direction. Note that the collimation and pointing are changed by rotating the chopper. Can be driven with an external frequency reference and can be driven to follow an arbitrary waveform (such as a ramp function). Available field is 10' diameter.

  • Pointing: Within a 60 deg. zenith cone, relative pointing better than 2" under computer control.

  • Tracking: Tracking stability is approximately +/- 2"/hour under computer control with a short–term RMS error of 0.1" (within a cone of 60 deg. from zenith).

  • Offsetting: For offsets less than 1 deg., positional accuracy is <1".

  • Pointing Limits:

    Hour Angle: -5:00:00 to +5:00:00 hours.
    Declination: -59:00:00 to +69:56:00 degrees.

  • Telescope Shutter: The telescope shutter consists of 2 parts. With the upper shutter raised, the airmass range is 1.0 – 1.5, and with both the upper and lower shutter raised the range of airmass available is 1.50 – 2.90. Observers should plan their observing to minimize the number of shutter changes.