The 1.3-m Reflector

This is the newest telescope at the Flagstaff Station, completed in the late summer of 1999. The telescope is a modified Ritchey-Chretien optical design with a corrector lens designed to produce a very large well-corrected field 1.3-degees in diameter. A large-format mosaic CCD camera incorporating a 2x3 mosaic of 2048x4096 SITE CCDs is being built to take advantage of this design, and offer wide-field imaging with exellent astrometric properties. The telescope will be operated completely automatically.

Telescope Data

• Construction
  • Optics: Corning Glass Works (blanks); Kodak (optical figuring)
  • Mounting: DFM Engineering, Inc.
  • Date Completed: 1998
  • Cost: $800,000
• Optical Design: Modified Ritchey-Chretien
• Effective Focal Length: 5.2-meters
• Overall Focal Ratio: f/4
• Focal Plane Scale: 39.6 arcsec/mm
• Primary Mirror
  • Diameter: 1.3-meters (51-inches)
  • Material: Ultra-Low-Expansion (ULE) Glass
  • Weight:
  • Figure: Concave Hyperboloid
  • Focal Ratio: f/2.4
• Secondary Mirror
  • Diameter: 0.61-meter (24-inches)
  • Material: ULE Glass
  • Weight:
  • Figure: Convex Hyperboloid
• Total Weight (Optics, Tube and Mount):

Instrumentation

• 2x3 2048x4096 Mosaic CCD Camera (under construction - presently operating with single-chip camera)

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