Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
Wiley Book of Astronomy:
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Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM)
An observatory located on La Palma in the Canary Islands, at an altitude of 2,400 m. Founded in 1979, it is owned and operated by the Instituto de Astrofiscia de Canarias. ORM is the site of a number of telescopes belonging to various nations, including the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope.
An observatory located on La Palma in the Canary Islands, at an altitude of 2,400 m. Founded in 1979, it is owned and operated by the Instituto de Astrofiscia de Canarias. ORM is the site of a number of telescopes belonging to various nations, including the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope.
Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy:
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Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory
An observatory owned and operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) at an altitude of 2400 m on La Palma, Canary Islands, founded in 1979. Telescopes belonging to various nations are sited here. The largest is the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), scheduled for opening in 2007. Next-largest is the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope, part of the Isaac Newton Group that also includes the Isaac Newton Telescope and the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope. Other major telescopes at ORM are the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo; the Nordic Optical Telescope; the Liverpool Telescope; the 1.2-m Belgian Mercator Telescope, opened 2001; the 0.97-m Swedish Solar Telescope (SST), opened 2002; and the 0.45-m Dutch Open Telescope (DOT), a solar telescope opened in 1997. The Carlsberg Meridian Telescope (CMT), opened in 1984, is owned and operated by the Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada, Spain. ORM also contains the 17-m Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov detector (MAGIC), opened in 2003. A second MAGIC was due for completion in 2007.
http://www.iac.es/gabinete/orm/indice.html
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Spanish: Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, ORM) is an astronomical observatory located in the municipality of Garafía on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. The observatory site is operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias which is based on nearby Tenerife, and it is part of European Northern Observatory.
The seeing statistics make it the second best location for optical and infrared astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere, after Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii. The site has some of the premier astronomical facilities in the Northern Hemisphere, including the adaptive optics corrected Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope which provides the highest resolution solar imaging of any telescope, and the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias which is the world's largest single-aperture optical telescope as of July 2009.[2]
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History
The observatory started with the Isaac Newton Telescope, which was moved to La Palma from the Royal Greenwich Observatory site at Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex, England in 1979. The move was beset with difficulties, and it is widely recognized that it would have been cheaper to have built a new telescope rather than moving an existing one.
The observatory was initiated in Santa Cruz de La Palma by representatives from Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Other countries became involved later, including Germany, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, and the United States.
The observatory was officially inaugurated on the 29th of June, 1985, by the Spanish royal family and six European heads of state. Seven helicopter pads were built at the observatory to allow the dignitaries to arrive in comfort.
A fire on the mountainside in 1997 damaged one of the gamma-ray telescopes, but the fire in September 2005 did no serious damage to buildings or telescopes.
Gallery
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Several of the helicopter pads built for the inauguration ceremony can be seen under the now dismantled HEGRA array
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Picture of the 10m Gran Telescopio Canarias building under construction in March 2003
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Picture of the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT)
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See also
- Roque de los Muchachos
- La Palma
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
- Teide Observatory
- Isaac Newton Group
- Astronomical seeing
- Gran Telescopio Canarias
References
- ^ "Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos Website". http://www.iac.es/eno.php?op1=2&lang=en. Retrieved 19 December 2009.
- ^ Klotz, Irene (2009-07-24). "New telescope is world’s largest ... for now". http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32114355/ns/technology_and_science-space/.
External links
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Wiley Book of Astronomy
Copyright © 2004 by Wiley-Blackwell. Wiley and the Wiley logo are registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Used here by license. Read more
Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy
A Dictionary of Astronomy. © 1997
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