Interferometry with the Large Binocular Telescope

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) will be the largest single telescope in the world when it is completed in 2005. The unique structure of the telescope incorporates two, 8.4 meter diameter primary mirrors on a 14.4 meter center-to-center mounting. This configuration provides the equivalent collecting area of a 12 meter telescope, and when combined coherently, the two optical paths offer very interesting possibilities for interferometry. Two initial interferometric instruments are planned for the LBT. A group based at the University of Arizona is constructing LBTI, a pupil-plane, nulling beam combiner operating in the thermal infrared N band. This instrument will search for and measure zodiacal light in candidate stellar systems for the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and Darwin missions. Expansion ports can accomodate additional instruments. A second group, based in Heidelberg, Arcetri, and Köln, is building LINC-NIRVANA, a near-infrared Fizeau-mode beam combiner. This type of observation preserves phase information and allows true imagery over a wide field of view. Using state-of-the-art detector arrays, coupled with advanced adaptive optics, LINC-NIRVANA will deliver the sensitivity of a 12 m telescope and the spatial resolution of a 23 m telescope, over a field of view up to 2 arc minutes square.     

Mechanical design of the solar telescope GREGOR

The mechanical structure of the GREGOR telescope was installed at the Observatorio del Teide, Tenerife, in 2004. New concepts for mounting and cooling of the 1.5‐meter primary mirror were introduced. GREGOR is an open telescope, therefore the dome is completely open during observations to allow for air flushing through the open, but stiff telescope structure. Backside cooling system of the primary mirror keeps the mirror surface close to ambient temperature to prevent mirror seeing. The large collecting area of the primary mirror results in high energy density at the field stop at the prime focus of the primary which needs to be removed. The optical elements are supported by precision alignment systems and should provide a stable solar image at the optical lab. The coudé train can be evacuated and serves as a natural barrier between the outer environmental conditions and the air‐conditioned optical laboratory with its sensitive scientific instrumentation. The telescope was successfully commissioned and will start its nominal operation during 2013 (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Considerations for the next generation of solar telescopes: A systems approach to solar physics

The exciting new high resolution images from the one meter Sunrise balloon telescope and the first images from the 1.6 meter Big Bear telescope together with the continuing data from the 1 meter Swedish Solar Observatory demonstrate the promise of the new generation of multimeter solar telescopes. While the promise of the new generation of telescopes is great the technical challenges to build them will require the efforts of a significant fraction of the solar community. In this talk I will emphasize the need for an integrated systems approach to the development of the telescope, its instruments, its software, and its operations and management structures. The experience of several decades of space mission has taught us a great deal about the value of planning mission development from the definition of the primary scientific objectives to the delivery of the data to the science community. Much of these lessons learned, often painfully, should provide guidance to those in developing the new telescope systems (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is a project which will produce a detailed digital phometric map of half the northern sky to about 23 magnitude using a special purpose wide field telescope of 2.5 meter aperture. This map will be used to select about a million galaxies and 100,000 quasars, for which high resolution spectra will be obtained using the same telescope. A catalog will be produced of all the detected objects, about 100 million galaxies and a similar number of stars, and a million quasar candidates.     

The project of high spatial resolution near infrared imaging system at Beijing Observatory

A high spatial resolution near infrared imaging system is being developed at Beijing Observatory. It is a joint-project with Institute of Optics and Electronics, CSA, and National Astronomical Observatory, Japan. The system contains a 512 × 512 PtSi CSD near infrared camera and a 21-element adaptive optics system and will be operated at Coudé focus of the 2.16 meter telescope at Xinglong Station, Beijing Observatory. The infrared camera will be fixed at Cassegrain focus with focus reducers too.     

First results obtained with DENIS

We briefly report on the first astronomical results obtained with the DENIS camera at the ESO 1 meter telescope.     

SUNRISE – Impressions from a successful science flight

SUNRISE is a balloon‐borne telescope with an aperture of one meter. It is equipped with a filter imager for the UV wavelength range between 214 nm and 400 nm (SUFI), and with a spectro‐polarimeter that measures the magnetic field of the photosphere using the Fe I line at 525.02 nm that has a Landé factor of 3. SUNRISE performed its first science flight from 8 to 14 June 2009. It was launched at the Swedish ESRANGE Space Center and cruised at an altitude of about 36 km and geographic latitudes between 70 and 74 degrees to Somerset Island in northern Canada. There, all data, the telescope and the gondola were successfully recovered. During its flight, Sunrise achieved high pointing stability during 33 hours, and recorded about 1.8 TB of science data. Already at this early stage of data processing it is clear that SUNRISE recorded UV images of the solar photosphere, and spectropolarimetric measurements of the quiet Sun's magnetic field of unprecedented quality (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Development of a Speckle Interferometer and the Measurement of Fried's Parameter (ro) at the Telescope Site

A new optical speckle interferometer for use at the 2.34 meter Vainu Bappu Telescope (VBT), at Vainu Bappu Observatory (VBO), Kavalur, India, has been designed and developed. Provisions have been made for observation both at the prime focus (f/3,25), as well as at the Cassegrain focus (f/13) of the said telescope. The technical details of this sensitive instrument and the design features are described. An interface between the telescope and the afore-mentioned interferometer is made based on a concept of eliminating the formation of eddies due to the hot air entrapment. The performances of this instrument has been tested both at the laboratory, as well as at the Cassegrain end of the telescope. It is being used routinely to observe the speckle-grams of close-binary (separation < 1 arc second) stars. The size of the Fried's parameter, r_o, is also measured.     

A CCD OBSERVATIONAL METHOD TO DETERMINE PRECISELY THE BARYCENTRICPOSITIONS OF THE OUTER PLANETS(SATURN-NEPTUNE)

This paper presents a new method to determine precisely the barycentric positions of the outer planets(Saturn - Neptune)by optical observations. It requires the CCD observations from a long focal distance telescope which is used to observe a planet and its satellites and ones from a meridian circle when it works in a CCD drift scanning manner. The key part of the method is tested by the observations with 1 meter telescope of Yunnan Observatory. The result shows that the new method is feasible to carry out.     

New vacuum solar telescope and observations with high resolution

The New Vacuum Solar Telescope(NVST) is a one meter vacuum solar telescope that aims to observe fine structures on the Sun. The main goals of NVST are high resolution imaging and spectral observations, including measurements of the solar magnetic field. NVST is the primary ground-based facility used by the Chinese solar research community in this solar cycle. It is located by Fuxian Lake in southwest China, where the seeing is good enough to perform high resolution observations. We first introduce the general conditions at the Fuxian Solar Observatory and the primary science cases of NVST. Then, the basic structures of this telescope and instruments are described in detail. Finally, some typical high resolution data of the solar photosphere and chromosphere are also shown.     

Sodium D2 line profiles: clues to the temperature structure of Mercury’s exosphere

The velocity distribution of atoms in an exosphere can be used to constrain source and loss processes. The velocity distribution itself can be constrained by observing the line profile of an atmospheric emission line. The only atomic species known to exist in the Hermean exosphere that has a strong enough resonance transition in the visible spectrum that its line profile can be observed from the ground with existing instruments is sodium. Line profiles of the sodium D2 emission (5889 A) were obtained at two facilities. On 29 and 30 May 1997, we obtained line profiles with the 107 inch telescope at The McDonald Observatory at coude focus. On 6 January 1998, we obtained line profiles at the Anglo–Australian telescope. The line profiles show that the sodium in Mercury’s atmosphere is at least 700 K hotter than the surface temperature throughout the atmosphere. This implies that the interaction of the Na atoms with the surface is governed by energetic processes.     

The GREGOR Fabry‐Pérot Interferometer

The GREGOR Fabry‐Pérot Interferometer (GFPI) is one of three first‐light instruments of the German 1.5‐meter GREGOR solar telescope at the Observatorio del Teide, Tenerife, Spain. The GFPI uses two tunable etalons in collimated mounting. Thanks to its large‐format, high‐cadence CCD detectors with sophisticated computer hard‐ and software it is capable of scanning spectral lines with a cadence that is sufficient to capture the dynamic evolution of the solar atmosphere. The field‐of‐view (FOV) of 50″×38″is well suited for quiet Sun and sunspot observations. However, in the vector spectropolarimetric mode the FOV reduces to 25″×38″. The spectral coverage in the spectroscopic mode extends from 530–860 nm with a theoretical spectral resolution of R ≈250 000, whereas in the vector spectropolarimetric mode the wavelength range is at present limited to 580–660 nm. The combination of fast narrow‐band imaging and post‐factum image restoration has the potential for discovery science concerning the dynamic Sun and its magnetic field at spatial scales down to ∼50 km on the solar surface (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

New telescopes in China

This paper covers the main aspects of three new optical telescopes: a 1.26 m aperture one for use in the infrared, a 1.56 m aperture one for astrometry, and a 2.16 m reflector for general astrophysical work. It also briefly mentions the 13.7 m telescope designed for the mm wavelength band, the first VLBI in China and the meter wavelength aperture synthesis telescope. All these telescopes, optical and radio, are now being built in China.Paper presented at the IAU Third Asian-Pacific Regional Meeting, held in Kyoto, Japan, between 30 September–6 October, 1984.     

云南天文台1m望远镜卡焦(缩焦)CCD测光系统的初步研究

用云台１ｍ望远镜镜卡焦（缩焦）ＣＣＤ测光系统对测光标准星进行了ＢＶＲＩ四色测光,计算得到了该系统的转换方程及其转换结果,并对计算结果进行了分析讨论．     

A high resolution imaging detector for TeV gamma-ray astronomy

Details are presented of an atmospheric Cherenkov telescope for use in very high energy gamma-ray astronomy which consists of a cluster of 109 close-packed photomultiplier tubes at the focus of a 10 meter optical reflector. The images of the Cherenkov flashes generated both by gamma-ray and charged cosmic-ray events are digitized and recorded. Subsequent off-line analysis of the images improves the significance of the signal to noise ratio by a factor of 10 compared with non-imaging techniques.     

Spectral Observations of the Flare Star HU Del

Results are presented from a study of 27 spectra of the flare star HU Del obtained during 2000–2002 on the 2.6 meter telescope at the Byurakan Observatory. Two flares were detected, along with a weak correlation between the equivalent widths of the Hα and Hβ emission lines. At the time of the photometric maximum of a flare the equivalent widths of both these lines are minimal and reach their maximum only significantly afterward. A strong increase in the Hβ line intensity is observed which appears to be the consequence of a photometrically undetected, short-duration flare. A possible relationship between the binary (multiple) character and the physical activity of this star is examined briefly in terms of current theoretical models.__________Translated from Astrofizika, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 335–348 (August 2005).     

GRIS: The GREGOR Infrared Spectrograph

This paper describes the main characteristics of GRIS (GREGOR Infrared Spectrograph), the grating spectrograph installed in the recently inaugurated (May 2012) 1.5‐meter GREGOR telescope located at the Observatorio del Teide in Tenerife. The spectrograph has a standard Czerny‐Turner configuration with parabolic collimator and camera mirrors that belong to the same conic surface. Although nothing prevents its use at visible wavelengths, the spectrograph will be initially used in combination with the infrared detector of the Tenerife Infrared Polarimeter (TIP‐II) in standard spectroscopic mode as well as for spectropolarimetric measurements (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

超新星1993J研究

本文给出北京天文台2.16m望远镜SN1993J光谱观测结果.