NOAO >   CTIO  >   Telescopes  >   Blanco4m

The Blanco 4-m Telescope

The Blanco 4m telescope was commissioned in 1974. It is a near twin of the Mayall 4m telescope on Kitt Peak. With the advent of the SOAR 4.2 m telescope, under construction on Cerro Pachón, it is the policy of the Observatory to develop the two telescopes to complement each other: wide field applications on the Blanco 4m and high resolution applications, which exploit the better image quality available over a more restricted field, on SOAR.

• The telescope
  • Optical properties
        Prime · f/8 · f14.5 · Active Optics
  • Environment status
         risk of condensation.
  • Horizon limits
  • Image quality
  • Seeing statistics
    
    
  • Daily procedures
    • Beginning of night
    • During the night
          Seeing measurement · Bad Weather Rules
    • End of night
    • Environment control
    
    
  • Maintenance procedures
    • Active optics
    • Focus settings
    • CO₂ snow cleaning
    • Wet washing
    • Re-aluminisation
    • Reflectometry
    
    
  • TCS object catalog format
  • Acquisition and guiding
  • TCS manual
  • Nightly efficiency table (prototype).
  
  
• GNATS problem reporting system
  • (Categories list)
  
  
  
• Available Instruments
  • Mosaic -- wide field optical imaging
  • Hydra -- multi-object optical spectroscopy
  • ISPI - Infrared Side Port Imager
  • RCSpec -- long slit optical spectroscopy
  • Echelle -- high resolution optical spectroscopy - retired
  • OSIRIS -- infrared imaging & spectroscopy - retired
  
  
  • Available tape drives
  
  

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webmaster@ctio.noao.edu This page last modified October 12 2006 17:10