Observatory

LCRO is a completely robotic telescope that can be operated remotely from any location with internet access using a web browser. The optical system includes the following.

Telescope:             305 mm Makutsov Cassegrain F/8 from Astro Physics.

Mount:                    Astro Physics model 1600 GTO.

Main Camera:       CCD from Finger Lakes Instruments (FLI) PL 16803.

Filters:                     FLI model CFW-3-10 filter wheel containing Astrodon
L, R, G, B, H-alpha, O-III, S-II and Sloan g’, r’, i’.

Focuser:                  Finger Lakes Instrument Atlas model.

Guiding:                  Is via an off axis guider (Astrodon) using SBIG ST-402.

Flats:                        Optec model Flatman XL electroluminescent panel.

The telescope is housed in a roll-off shed with an attached operators room. The electronics for control and communications with the telescope and roll-off are installed in an electronic rack in the operators room and include the following.

• Primary computer with Windows 7 OS
• Secondary back up computer
• Cisco router
• Internet connected AC outlet strip
• Dual 12 VDC power supplies for mount and camera
• Raspberry Pi running Linux for roof control and weather monitoring
• Boltwood cloud sensor (installed on roof of operators room)
• UPS capable of powering complete system thru an emergency shutdown

The primary software for overall system-wide control is DC-3 Dreams “ACP” observatory control.  ACP integrates with the Astro-Physics Command Center (APCC) for telescope control; with Maxim DL for camera control; with FocusMax for automated razor-sharp focusing; and with a custom Linux-based roof controller.  Raw images and data are accessed by users via FTP.  No image processing is done on the LCRO computers, users must perform their own calibration and data reduction using flats, darks and bias frames provided by LCRO.

For more than one hundred years astronomers with the Carnegie Observatories have made major contributions to astronomy and astrophysics. In 1904 George Ellery Hale departed Yerkes Observatory and with support from the newly formed Carnegie Institute of Washington founded the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory in the San Gabriel mountains near Pasadena, California. Hale, inventor of the spectroheliograph, discoverer of solar magnetism, and one of the founders of modern astrophysics, was determined to push beyond the descriptive astronomy of earlier generations to understand the internal physics of the Sun and the stars. In pursuit of this goal, stellar telescopes soon followed the initial complement of solar telescopes on Mount Wilson: first the 60-inch, then the 100-inch Hooker telescope, each the largest in the world at the time of its construction.

The Mount Wilson telescopes transformed astronomy and astrophysics. It was with these that Shapley mapped the globular cluster system of the galaxy, Hubble discovered the expanding universe, Baade first recognized the phenomenon of stellar populations, and Adams, Joy, Sandage, and others established the empirical basis for theories of stellar structure and evolution. Striving to push deeper into the universe, in 1928 the Carnegie and Mount Wilson astronomers persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to fund a 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain. Title was given to the California Institute of Technology, which joined with Carnegie to form the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, a partnership that lasted until 1980.

Carnegie astronomers had long wanted an observing station in the Southern Hemisphere that would give them access to the Magellanic Clouds and the center of the Milky Way. The observatory, located at a superb site high in the southern reaches of Chile’s Atacama Desert, was established in 1969 to be home to both 40-inch and 100-inch reflecting telescopes. In 1986, as light pollution encroached from the Los Angeles basin, day-to-day operation of the historical telescopes on Mount Wilson was transferred to the Mount Wilson Institute, and Las Campanas became Carnegie’s principal observing site. The newest additions there, twin 6.5-meter reflectors, are remarkable members of the latest generation of giant telescopes.

The observatory itself is located approximately 100 kilometers north of La Serena, Chile, at an altitude of 2,400 meters, in a region of dark and clear skies and excellent seeing unsurpassed by any site on Earth. The principal telescopes at Las Campanas are the Swope 1-meter telescope, the du Pont 2.5-meter telescope, and the twin 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes. Carnegie operates the latter for a consortium whose other members are Harvard, MIT, and the Universities of Arizona and Michigan.

Note: This history is excerpted from http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/about/history and reproduced here with the permission of The Carnegie Observatories