Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope

Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope

The Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope in 2011 against a background of clouds as the sun rises
Organisation Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes
Location(s) La Palma, Canary Islands
Coordinates 28°45′40″N 17°52′41″W / 28.761217°N 17.878104°W / 28.761217; -17.878104
Altitude 2,360 metres (7,740 ft)
Wavelength Optical
Built 1983
Telescope style Parabolic Mirror
Diameter 1 metre
Mounting Equatorial Cross-axis
Website www.ing.iac.es/PR/jkt_info

The Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope or JKT is a 1-metre optical telescope named for the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain.

Funded jointly by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom with planning throughout the 1970s, construction of the JKT was completed in 1983 with the first photographic plate taken in March 1984. It can be used with two different focal points and different instruments, although by 1998 this was refined to one CCD imaging instrument. The telescope weighs nearly 40 metric tons in total.[1]

Being superseded by more recent and larger telescopes, it was taken out of service as a common-user facility as of August 2003.

Since 2014, the telescope is owned by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and operated by the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA)[1] which has retrofitted JKT as a remotely operated observatory (under the internal designation SARA-RM), with the first new observations in this regime in April 2016.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "The 1.0-m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (JKT)". Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes. 8 August 2014.

Coordinates: 28°45′41″N 17°52′41″W / 28.76139°N 17.87806°W / 28.76139; -17.87806

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