History

       
The UK’s Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) began planning the telescope in 1974 with a final budget of 10 million pounds. In 1981, 20% of the SERC negotiated a 20% stake with Holland, so the telescope belongs to the United Kingdom and the rest to the Netherlands. The first light of the telescope was on June 1, 1981 using the instrument TAURUS-2.

Results
       
The most outstanding results extracted with data obtained in this telescope are:
       
* The discovery of the first evidence of a supermassive black hole (Sgr A*) in the center of the Milky Way.
   
* The first optical observation of a gamma ray burst

Curiosities

       
* The telescope takes the name of the astronomer William Herschel (Germany 1738 – England 1822), a musician without scientific formation who began his interest in the astronomy to the 35 years of age. This astronomer discovered the planet Uranus with a 1.2m reflecting telescope that built the same along with his sister since he could not afford to buy a refractor telescope of similar size to the use at the time. Herschel was also a pioneer in the design of the azimuth mount that is now used in telescopes like the WHT. In 1981, with the first light of the telescope, was the bicentennial of the discovery of Uranus, hence the telescope bears the name of William Herschel.

* The WHT is like a Swiss Army Knife. In each focus an instrument is placed and in turn has several instruments interchangeable with each other with relative ease. Currently professional astronomers can request observation time for the following instruments:

• • ISIS – espectrograph
  • LIRIS – infrarred espectrograph
  • ACAM – ccd camera and low resolution spectroscopy
  • AF2/WYFFOS – multiobject espectroscopy
  • NAOMI/OASIS – espectroscopy
  • Adaptative optics
  • NAOMI/INGRID – infrarred imaging

More about the other telescopes at the Observatory Roque de Los Muchachos can be found on the official website of the Observatory or at Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and Gran Telescopio de Canarias.

La entrada William Herschel Telescope se publicó primero en AstroLaPalma.

History

After years in the drawing boards of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, in 1994 GRANTECAN SA when it was founded, with the aim of designing and building the world’s largest telescope: the Gran Telescopio Canarias. Subsequently, agreements were signed with the Government of Mexico, for two of their universities to participate in the project and also joined as a partner the United States, through the University of Florida. The telescope cost no less than 130 million euros and has an annual budget of nearly 9 million Euros.

The construction of the telescope at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos on the island of La Palma, began in 2000 and the start of the science phase began operating in March 2009. The telescope time is shared by Spanish scientists (90%), Mexico (5%) and the U.S. (5%), the same percentage who contributed to the initial project.

Curiosities

• We can compare the power of sight of the telescope to four million human eyes. It could distinguish the headlights of a car at about 20,000 miles away.
• The metal structure of the dome is assembled with screws 16,000 and 43,000 metal nuts.
• The mirrors are cleaned with powdered snow made of carbon dioxide. There are 6 spare mirrors.
• GTC employs about 65 people or so (about 45 on the island of La Palma alone). There are 4 working groups: maintenance, science, management and development.
• Any day between 10-20 people are working on the telescope, the rest work in offices remotely. However, at night, despite its size, the telescope requires only 2 people to run observations: an astronomer and a technician. It’s all computerized.

Results

The Gran Telescopio de Canarias studies the nature of black holes, star and galaxy formation of a very young Universe. A fairly booming field developed here is the study of distant exoplanets (Planetary Transits) and very energetic events such as: very distant supernovae & black hole collisions.

See scientific publications derived from the Gran Telescopio de Canarias data by clicking here.

More about the other telescopes at the Observatory Roque de Los Muchachos can be found on the official website of the Observatory or at Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and William Herschel Telescope.

La entrada Gran Telescopio de Canarias se publicó primero en AstroLaPalma.