Robotic Telescopes
The robotic Liverpool Telescope
The Liverpool Telescope is in the Canary Islands and is the world's largest robotic telescope. It is available for registered schools to use through the National Schools' Observatory.
To see the important parts making up the Liverpool Telescope click HERE.
Robotic telescopes work by following an observing schedule containing a list of all the observations to be carried out that night. The schedule is sent from a Telescope Management Centre (TMC) to the telescope using the internet.
The TMC for the Liverpool Telescope (LT) is the Astrophysics Research Institute at Liverpool John Moores University, who own and operate the LT.
During the night, the telescope automatically detemines the most efficient way of obtaining the observations on the schedule. If, however, weather conditions are poor, then the computers will take appropriate action and the telescope may be closed and/or observations re-scheduled.
Once a night's observing run has been completed, the image data associated with each observation is
sent back to the TMC via the internet for distribution to astronomers and schools.
Making observations using a robotic telescope
The Liverpool Telescope works in an off-line observing mode. In this mode requests are sent to the telescope and will be taken at the first opportunity, which normally means the next time it gets dark (weather permitting).Requests are handled in the Go Observing section of the NSO website.
To submit an observing request, users will need a username and password, which are only made available to registered schools.
Within a day or two the telescope will have undertaken your observations and the image data will be available to download from this website ready for analysis to begin.
In many cases observations will be completed by the following day, however,
some observations will take a little longer, during which time you can
monitor progress.
