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This is the newest telescope at the Flagstaff Station, completed in the late summer of 1999. The telescope is a modified Ritchey-Chretien optical design with a corrector lens designed to produce a very large well-corrected field 1.3-degees in diameter. A large-format mosaic CCD camera incorporating a 2x3 mosaic of 2048x4096 SITE CCDs takes advantage of this design, and offers wide-field imaging with exellent astrometric properties in the visible and near-IR bands. The telescope is operated completely automatically.

 

Telescope Data
 
  • Construction
    • Optics: Corning Glass Works (blanks); Eastman Kodak (optical figuring)
    • Mounting: DFM Engineering, Inc.
    • Date Completed: 1999
    • Cost: $800,000
  • Optical Design: Modified Ritchey-Chretien
  • Effective Focal Length: 5.2-meters
  • Overall Focal Ratio: f/4
  • Focal Plane Scale: 39.6 arcsec/mm
     
  • Primary Mirror
    • Diameter: 1.3 meters (51 inches)
    • Material: Ultra-Low-Expansion (ULE) Glass
    • Figure: Concave Hyperboloid
    • Focal Ratio: f/2.4
  • Secondary Mirror
    • Diameter: 0.61 meter (24 inches)
    • Material: ULE Glass
    • Figure: Convex Hyperboloid
Instrumentation
  • 2x3 2048x4096 Mosaic CCD Camera 

 
 

Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command | 1100 Balch Blvd. | Stennis Space Center, Mississippi 39529

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