The Bradford Robotic Telescope (BRT) is an autonomous astronomical

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe ...

located at

Teide Observatory Teide Observatory ( es, Observatorio del Teide), IAU code 954, is an astronomical observatory on Mount Teide at , located on Tenerife, Spain. It has been operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias since its inauguration in 1964. It becam ...

Tenerife Tenerife (; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands. It is home to 43% of the total population of the archipelago. With a land area of and a population of 978,100 inhabitants as of Janu ...

in the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocc ...

. It is owned by the

University of Bradford The University of Bradford is a Public university, public research university located in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. A plate glass university, it received its royal charter in 1966, making it the 40th university to be creat ...

and was built between 2002 and 2004 for remote use by schools and individuals worldwide. As of November 2009, the observatory has returned over 70,000 images and has more than 23,000 users. On May 15, 2016, the BRT team announced via email to registered users that control of the Bradford Telescope would be transferred to the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

, and renamed the Autonomous Robotic Telescope (ART). The transfer of the telescope assets to the Open University was completed in 2016. The original telescope hardware is in the process of being decommissioned (May 2017) and has been replaced by two telescopes on Mount Teide, the Physics Innovations Robotic Telescope Explorer (PIRATE) and the COmpletely Autonomous Service Telescope (COAST) installed as part of the OpenSTEM Labs facility.

Mount

All the hardware is mounted on top of a 2-meter high pier, which rests on the top of the bed rock of the mountain. The pier is made of steel and is filled with sand to prevent further damping. The Paramount ME mount is an equatorial mount, which means that RA axis points to the celestial pole, thus enabling the systems to track objects without field rotation.

Instrumentation

The Bradford Robotic Telescope consists of three optical systems providing varying fields of view.

Control systems

In March 2003, a new dome arrived at the site. It uses the Meridian Controls system to control the full dome remotely. No human intervention is required.

Weather systems

The BRT Weather Station runs 24x7, but is unreliable. It is because the observatory is located very high up. It often occurs that there is haze or cloud cover, right till the bottom of the observatory. So, the observatory weather system relies on the meteorological forecasts from the weather station at Observatorio del Teide. It gives details such as wind speed and direction, solar radiation, internal and external humidity, etc. The main function of the weather station is to provide a signal to the safety control systems. It generates an 'alert' that describes what the weather conditions are. The safety systems have a set of 'rules' that determine bad weather. If any of these 'rules' are met, then the safety systems generates an alert that instruct the control systems to act accordingly.

The different cameras

Galaxy camera

Cluster camera

Constellation camera

References

External links

* * {{Official website, http://www.telescope.org
Observatorio del Teide

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