Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope
Encyclopedia
The Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope or JKT is a 1m optical telescope of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes
Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes
The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes or ING operates the William Herschel Telescope, Isaac Newton Telescope and Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope optical telescopes for the Science and Technology Facilities Council , the NWO and the IAC...

 on La Palma
La Palma
La Palma is the most north-westerly of the Canary Islands. La Palma has an area of 706 km2 making it the fifth largest of the seven main Canary Islands...

 in the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

. It was funded by Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and completed in the early 1980s. Planning procceded throughout the 1970s and it came online in 1983-1984. It can be used with 2 different focal points, and different instruments, although by 1998 this was refined to one instrument. The telescope weighs in total about 40 metric tons according to JKT documentation.

Now superseded by more recent and larger telescopes it was taken out of service as a common user facility in the middle of 2003.

It is named for the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn
Jacobus Kapteyn
Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, was a Dutch astronomer, best known for his extensive studies of the Milky Way and as the first discoverer of evidence for galactic rotation....

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