Telescopes
Telescopes
The Liverpool Telescope
LJMU established a subsidiary company, Telescope Technologies Ltd (TTL), in 1996 to design and build the world's largest robotic telescope, the LJMU-owned Liverpool Telescope, located in La Palma, Canaries. The Liverpool Telescope has been delivering front rank science to the UK and international communities robotically since 2004, and it is the only optical telescope in the world, where science, education and outreach are really working side by side.
Unlike other ground-based telescopes, the Liverpool Telescope is flexible enough to respond to objects that appear suddenly in the sky – such as supernovae, gamma ray bursts and comets – while also contributing, for example, to the discovery of planets outside our own solar system.
The development of the Liverpool Telescope – and four subsequent other robotic telescopes – has enabled LJMU’s Astrophysics Research Institute to play an instrumental role in developing a network of research class telescopes, on world-class sites around the globe.
This idea was first espoused by Mike Bode, LJMU’s Professor of Astrophysics, and is being pioneered by the ARI through the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC)-funded “RoboNet” project.
Professor Bode said: “RoboNet is already contributing to major advances in our knowledge of the Universe and LJMU was recently part of a wider international collaboration that discovered the most Earth-like planet so far detected around another star.”
