38 n SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL May 2024 www.drivesncontrols.com Fast-moving telescope will capture cataclysmic events The universe is active, dynamic and variable, with explosive and cataclysmic events happening all the time. The unpredictable nature of these events, coupled with their transience, makes them di cult to study. Transient phenomena such as such as supernovae – exploding stars at the end of their lives – and enormous gamma-ray explosions, are manifestations of the most extreme events in our universe: highly energetic processes occurring at extremely high gravity, magnetic and electrical eld strengths. Even when such phenomena are identied by powerful telescopes, they may only be visible for a matter of minutes. Their transient nature means that opportunities to study them are extremely rare. No sooner have they been identied, and telescopes moved to target them, before they are too faint to observe. In an attempt to discover more about such events, the world’s biggest robotic telescope is being developed by an international collaborative project. The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) will specialise in capturing explosive and rapidly-fading astronomical phenomena and will be able to move to view a new target in just 30 seconds. The NRT follows the earlier (2003) Liverpool Telescope (LT), located on La Palma in the Canary Islands, which was developed by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). The new telescope will be ten times faster and four times more sensitive, allowing scientists to capture the rst seconds after an explosion and to make new discoveries about the universe. The NRT will also be built on La Palma, where it will benet from the high altitude, stable atmosphere and low light pollution. The project to develop the new telescope is being led by LJMU in partnership with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) and the University of Oviedo in Spain. The increased sensitivity of the NRT results from its much larger size, with a primary mirror diameter of 4m – twice the size of its predecessor. The fully automated telescope will be able to operate without sta, but the crucial benet of automation will be the 30second time-to-target. Astronomers around the world will send alerts to the NRT about the presence of fast-moving astronomical phenomena, and its automated control will react rapidly to locate the target. The new telescope will be housed in the world’s largest clamshell-style roof for any telescope, helping to achieve its rapid deployment and providing 360-degree viewing. To achieve the 30s-to-target mark, the ability to move the telescope quickly will be crucial. With such a short time window to observe phenomena, this must be combined with rapid engagement of the telescope’s instruments. This instrumentation will measure various properties of light from celestial objects and will be installed in part of the telescope known as the focal station. Light will travel through the optical system and down to its focus, where it will reach a third mirror in the optical path – the science fold mirror. This mirror is angled at 45 degrees and rotates to reect the light towards dierent instruments. The array of instruments, positioned around the focal station, will include spectrographs to identify aspects such as the target’s chemical composition, as well as its temperature, mass, luminosity, and even its relative motion – all by measuring the light spectrum. The instruments also include a polarimeter that can identify the angle of approaching lightwaves to identify phenomena such as magnetic elds. A new automated telescope is set to shed light on rapidly-evolving astronomical events such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. To achieve this, the telescope will depend on an extremely fast motion system to drive its instrumentation array. The New Robotic Telescope will be moved rapidly to capture transient astronomical events before they fade Image: Daniel López / IAC
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