It has become a very popular activity so people will need to take their planning seriously or choose a tour that handles everything for you. The best place to watch the event anywhere in the Hawaiian islands is up at the top of the mountain in the park. Operations are based in our global headquarters in Goleta, California, with a small number of staff at offices in Australia, Hawaii, and the United Kingdom.Sunrise is a special time on the mountain as the sun’s rays demonstrates the origins of the story of Maui, the demi-god, who held the beams of light until the sun agreed to move slower across the sky. A small group of distinguished astronomers and engineers direct network operations. In 2019 a second one-meter telescope was deployed at McDonald Observatory, and in 2021 two one-meter telescopes were installed at Teide Observatory, bringing the one-meter network to a total of thirteen telescopes.Įfficiency and high productivity are hallmarks of the LCO staff. In 2017, the Tel Aviv University WISE Observatory joined the network with the installation of an LCO high-resolution spectrograph (NRES) at the site. From 2015-2017, seven 40-cm telescopes were deployed to CTIO, Haleakala Observatory, SSO, and to Teide Observatory on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Full operations of Las Cumbres Observatory began May 1, 2014. LCO designed its own one-meter and 40-cm telescopes to be distributed at multiple sites.ĭuring 20, nine one-meter telescopes were constructed and deployed to McDonald Observatory at Fort Davis, Texas Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) in Chile South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), near Sutherland, South Africa and SSO in Australia. Rosing and the LCO staff came to understand that a network composed of many smaller telescopes would provide greater observing capacity. LCO also purchased the company that built the Faulkes telescopes, Telescope Technologies Limited of Liverpool, with the intent of installing additional 2-meter telescopes at different sites to form a robotically operated network. LCO initially acquired the two Faulkes two-meter telescopes: Faulkes Telescope North located at Haleakala Observatory, on Maui, Hawaii, and Faulkes Telescope South at Siding Spring Observatory (SSO), in eastern Australia. We approached the creation of our worldwide network of robotic telescopes from the perspective of a lean high-tech startup. LCO is a non-profit science institute with the mission of advancing science and education. The Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network was founded in 2005 by the technologist Wayne Rosing. Within minutes of the camera shutter closing at the telescope, the science data are calibrated and sent to the science archive for retrieval by the scientists. Observing schedules are stored at site, so telescopes can continue observing even when an external link is interrupted. Calibration observations are made during daytime science observations are acquired at night. Duplicate instruments increase the likelihood of acquiring an observation and also allow events to be observed simultaneously from multiple telescopes.įully robotic operations. Uniform instrumentation across the network. Scientists can make requests for observations at any time as the scheduler updates the entire network plan about every 5 minutes. Working without human intervention-which would only slow it down-LCO’s internet-based scheduler takes requests for observations from scientists and education observers, analyzes everything from competing requests and conditions at each telescope site, directs individual telescopes to make the desired observations, and compiles the results. At the heart of LCO operations sits an amazing bit of artificial intelligence called the scheduler. The light from celestial objects can be sampled with greater frequency and for longer durations when observations are passed from one telescope to the next.ĭynamic observation scheduling. The spread of telescopes around the world greatly increases the opportunities to observe all astronomical events and transient events can be targeted immediately. Transients are astronomical phenomena whose duration can range from seconds to several years.Ī global distribution of telescopes. Purpose-built to observe transient astronomical events.
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