The New Robotic Telescope will be a fully autonomous, rapid reaction, primarily spectroscopic facility for the classification of astronomical transients. The 4.18m diameter primary mirror is to be composed of 18 hexagonal mirror segments, arranged with a secondary mirror that feeds the Cassegrain focal stations with an F/10.635 beam. The final telescope design does not follow an established prescription, although both primary and secondary remain hyperbolic. However, the tube length is retained from an earlier F/7.5 RC design and secondary mirror size reduced to minimise obscuration of the primary. The optimisation process involved considering the M2 / fold size trade-off while solving the surfaces for image quality, contrast and wavefront error after speeding up the primary mirror. The final effective focal ratio is then slower to allow for workable tolerances through manufacture, installation and operations. In this presentation the optimisation process, trade-offs, tolerances and final design will be summarised.
The New Robotic Telescope (NRT), the 4-metre, next-generation Liverpool Telescope (LT), will be located on La Palma, Canary Islands. The design and development of the world’s largest robotic telescope, with a slew speed of approximately 10 degrees/second, poses challenges that have resulted in innovative design concepts, including the scheduling algorithms used for optimal science efficiency. We present the latest updates for the NRT project, focusing, in particular, on the status of the observing model which is being adapted from the existing LT model. The catalogue of LT data taken over the past 18 years is being used to model the observing behaviour of the facility and to act as input data for the future NRT scheduling algorithm. This algorithm will combine the existing LT observing model with a new facility Key Science Program, which will conduct rapid-response spectroscopic classifications of a variety of survey targets, transient alerts and variables.
The NRT is an international collaboration to design and build a leading astronomical facility in the optical and near infrared ranges for the emergent area of time domain astronomy. That relies on the combination of a large collecting area (4 m diameter), quick response (<30 s), and full robotic operation. The system level analysis and trade-offs for assessing image quality, defining optics and optomechanics requirements, integration of both, and expected performance are particular challenging issues for such segmented optical configuration. This contribution presents the methodology developed within the project to produce suitable optical and optomechanical models and measure their performance. This methodology optimizes system level parameter exploration and tradeoffs, quick regeneration of models after possible changes in the design, and integration between optical and mechanical analysis.
The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) with a collecting area of 4pi square meters will be the largest fully robotic telescope in the world. This contribution is focused on the design of the telescope control system, summarizing the state of the art and proposing a software architecture and a development roadmap that reflects the needs and requirements for this facility. This pioneering effort for a large robotic telescope aims also to provide standards for future similar facilities.
The robotic 2-metre Liverpool Telescope (LT), located at Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, has seen great success in its <15 year lifetime. In particular the facility thrives in time domain astronomy, responding rapidly to triggers from Swift and efficiently conducting a wide variety of science with its intelligent scheduler. The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) will be a 4-metre class, rapid response, autonomous telescope joining the Liverpool Telescope on La Palma in ~2025. The NRT will slew to targets and start observations within 30 seconds of receipt of a trigger, allowing us to observe faint and rapidly fading transient sources that no other optical facility can capture. The NRT will be the world’s largest optical robotic telescope. Its novel, first-generation instrumentation suite will be designed to conduct spectroscopic, polarimetric and photometric observations driven by user requirements.
The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) will be the largest fully robotic telescope in the world (4-m class). The primary mirror (M1) will be comprised of 18 independent 960 mm hexagonal segments with an actively controlled position to maintain the shape of the optical surface. The secondary mirror (M2) will be a lightweighted circular mirror of 1270 mm of diameter. This contribution presents the conceptual design and preliminary results of the M1 segment support assembly and a first study of two lightweighted substrate candidates for the M2 mirror.
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