Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope

The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, aka the VATT, is a 1.8 meter Gregorian telescope

Gregorian telescope

The Gregorian telescope is a type of reflecting telescope designed by Scottish mathematician and astronomer James Gregory in the 17th century, and first built in 1673 by Robert Hooke...

observing in the optical and infrared

Infrared astronomy

Infrared astronomy is the branch of astronomy and astrophysics that studies astronomical objects visible in infrared radiation. The wavelength of infrared light ranges from 0.75 to 300 micrometers...

. It is part of the Mount Graham International Observatory

Mount Graham International Observatory

Mount Graham International Observatory is a division of Steward Observatory the research arm for the Department of Astronomy at The University of Arizona. It is located in southeast Arizona's Pinaleno Mountains near Mount Graham....

. It is situated on Mount Graham

Mount Graham

Mount Graham is a mountain in southeastern Arizona in the United States, in the Coronado National Forest. It is the highest mountain in the Pinaleño Mountains. As the name "Mount Graham" is often used by locals to refer to the entire mountain range, the peak itself is frequently referred to as...

in southeast Arizona

Arizona

Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...

, and it achieved 'first light', the first starlight to pass through the telescope onto a detector, in 1993. It is operated by the Vatican Observatory

Vatican Observatory

The Vatican Observatory is an astronomical research and educational institution supported by the Holy See. Originally based in Rome, it now has headquarters and laboratory at the summer residence of the Pope in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, and an observatory at the Mount Graham International...

, one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world, in partnership with The University of Arizona.

The heart of the telescope is an f/1.0 honeycombed construction, borosilicate primary mirror. The mirror was manufactured at The University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratoryhttp://mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/, which pioneered both the spin-casting and the stressed-lap polishing techniques which are being used for telescope mirrors that include the 6.5 meter aperture MMT

MMT Observatory

The MMT Observatory is an astronomical observatory on the site of Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory . The Whipple observatory complex is located on Mount Hopkins, Arizona, USA in the Santa Rita Mountains...

and Magellan telescopes

Magellan telescopes

The Magellan Telescopes are a pair of 6.5 m diameter optical telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The two telescopes are named after the astronomer Walter Baade and the philanthropist Landon T...

and the two 8.4 meter mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope

Large Binocular Telescope

Large Binocular Telescope is an optical telescope for astronomy located on Mount Graham in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, and is a part of the Mount Graham International Observatory...

. The VATT's mirror is unusually 'fast', f/1, which means that its focal distance is equal to its diameter. Because it has such a short focal length, a Gregorian

Gregorian telescope

The Gregorian telescope is a type of reflecting telescope designed by Scottish mathematician and astronomer James Gregory in the 17th century, and first built in 1673 by Robert Hooke...

design could be employed which uses a concave secondary mirror at a point beyond the primary focus; this allows unusually sharp focusing across the field of view.

The unusual optical design and novel mirror fabrication techniques mean that both the primary and secondary mirrors are among the most exact surfaces ever made for a ground-based telescope. In addition, the skies above Mount Graham are among the most clear, steady, and dark in the continental North America. Seeing

Astronomical seeing

Astronomical seeing refers to the blurring and twinkling of astronomical objects such as stars caused by turbulent mixing in the Earth's atmosphere varying the optical refractive index...

of better than one arc-second even without adaptive optics can be achieved on a regular basis.

Optical System	Aplanatic Gregorian f/9
Focal Length	16.48 m
Primary Mirror	f/1.0, Diameter 1.83 m
Secondary Mirror	f/0.9, Diameter 0.38 m (Focus Control: 0.1 micrometre)
Field of View	72 mm (15')
Scale	12.52 "/mm
Image Quality	0.1 ' - 6.8 "
Mount	Alt-Az + Derotator

Given its excellent optical qualities, the telescope has been used primarily for imaging and photometric

Photometry (astronomy)

Photometry is a technique of astronomy concerned with measuring the flux, or intensity of an astronomical object's electromagnetic radiation...

work, in which it regularly outperforms much larger telescopes located elsewhere. Among the notable results from this telescope have been the discovery of MACHO

Massive compact halo object

Massive astrophysical compact halo object, or MACHO, is a general name for any kind of astronomical body that might explain the apparent presence of dark matter in galaxy halos. A MACHO is a body composed of normal baryonic matter, which emits little or no radiation and drifts through interstellar...

s in the Andromeda Galaxy; the validation of the Stromvil photometric filter system; evidence for how the shape and dimensions of galaxies have changed over the age of the universe; discovery of the first binary 'Vesta chip' asteroid; and the characterization and classification by visible colors of some 100 Trans-Neptunian object

Trans-Neptunian object

A trans-Neptunian object is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune.The first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered was Pluto in 1930...

s, most of them fainter than magnitude

Apparent magnitude

The apparent magnitude of a celestial body is a measure of its brightness as seen by an observer on Earth, adjusted to the value it would have in the absence of the atmosphere...

21.

The government of the Vatican City State

Vatican City

Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...

supports the Vatican Observatory staff and regular research costs, but the cost to build and maintain the VATT itself has come from private donors. The major donors supporting the construction of the telescope were Fred and Alice P. Lennon and Thomas J. Bannan. Benefactors to the Vatican Observatory Foundationhttp://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/Support.html continue to support the operating costs of the Alice P. Lennon telescope and its attached Thomas J. Bannan astrophysics facility.

External links

VATT - official site
Eastern Arizona College's Discovery Park Campus - Guided MGIO tours for the public

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

See also

External links