The Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) is an astronomical telescope

Telescope

A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...

 located at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory

Roque de los Muchachos Observatory

Roque de los Muchachos Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in the municipality of Garafía on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands...

, 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...

. First light came in 1988, with regular observing beginning in 1989. It is funded by Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 and Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

. Access is provided to astronomers of all nationalities through international time allocation committees.

The NOT was the first major telescope facility designed to use active optics

Active optics

Active optics is a technology used with reflecting telescopes developed in the 1980s, which actively shapes a telescope's mirrors to prevent deformation due to external influences such as wind, temperature, mechanical stress...

 to correct the shape of a thin, lightweight primary mirror supported on actuators. The main mirror has a diameter of 2.56 metres (100.8 in).

Instrumentation

• ALFOSC: CCD (visible light) faint object spectrograph and 4 Megapixel camera
• NOTCam: 1 Megapixel HgCdTe Hawaii infrared camera and spectrograph
  Spectrograph
  A spectrograph is an instrument that separates an incoming wave into a frequency spectrum. There are several kinds of machines referred to as spectrographs, depending on the precise nature of the waves...
  
  
• MOSCA: 16 Megapixel CCD camera
• SOFIN: High resolution CCD spectrograph (up to R=170000)
• StanCam: Stand-by 1 Megapixel CCD camera
• LuckyCam: High frame rate, low noise L3Vision CCD camera for lucky imaging
  Lucky imaging
  Lucky imaging is one form of speckle imaging used for astronomical photography. Speckle imaging techniques use a high-speed camera with exposure times short enough so that the changes in the Earth's atmosphere during the exposure are minimal.With lucky imaging, those optimum exposures least...
  
  
• TURPOL: UBVRI Photopolarimeter
• FIES: cross-dispersed high-resolution (up to R=60000) echelle spectrograph
  Echelle grating
  An echelle grating is a type of diffraction grating which is characterised by a relatively low groove density but is optimized for high diffraction orders. Echelle gratings are, like other types of diffraction grating, used in spectrometers and similar instruments, such as HARPS, and numerous...
  
  , isolated from thermal and mechanical instability.