Liverpool Telescope
We own and operate the Liverpool Telescope
We are the only astronomy group in the UK to operate its own major optical telescope.
Sited on La Palma in the Canary Islands, the Liverpool Telescope is the world's largest fully robotic telescope. The remoteness of the island, lack of urban development and restrictions on artificial light pollution makes this one of the best astronomical sites in the world. The website for science users of the telescope can be found here.
Telescope details
- A two-metre Cassegrain reflector, with Ritchey-Chretien hyperbolic optics, on an alt-azimuth mount
- Up to nine different instruments can be mounted at the telescope, including imaging cameras and spectrometers
- Over the years a wide variety of optical and near-IR imagers, spectrometers, and polarimeters have been mounted on the telescope
- Autonomous but can be manually controlled
Scientific goals
- Rapid robotic reaction to unpredictable phenomena and their systematic follow-up
- Small scale surveys and source follow-up
- Monitoring of variable objects on all timescales from seconds to years
- Simultaneous coordinated observations with other ground and space based facilities
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Liverpool Telescope
Located on the island of La Palma on the Canary Islands.
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NGC772
An unbarred spiral galaxy approximately 130 million light-years away in the constellation Aries. The image was captured from the Liverpool Telescope.
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Monitoring the telescope
The Liverpool Telescope support building office.
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A fully robotic telescope
Owned and operated by the Astrophysics Research Institute, it was designed and built by Telescope Technologies Limited (a spin-off company of the University) as the prototype of their two-metre class telescopes.
