A network of telescopes is the responsible for taking the images of the sky shown in the app. By now, we show images from four telescopes, but soon more telescopes will be added. Our final aim is to have a network of telescopes all over the world making continuous observations. So, it will be very easy to locate and track the candidate asteroids.

If you have a telescope and you would like to join to this network for sharing your images through our app, send an email to Miquel Serra-Ricart (mserra @ iac.es).

Our telescopes are the following:

• Telescope IAC80 (OT-IAC, Tenerife, Spain)

It is located in the Teide Observatory (OT-IAC, Tenerife), was completely designed and built by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), being the first telescope of this kind developed in Spain. The IAC began its development in 1980, and was definitively installed in the OT in 1991. This telescope has a German equatorial mount with an effective focal ratio of f / 11.3, an effective focal length of 9.02 m and a primary mirror of 82 cm in diameter.  The instrumentation is installed in the primary focus Cassegrain (read the full description here).

• Telescope OGS (OT-IAC, Tenerife, Spain)

The Terrestrial Optical Station (OGS) was built within the strategic plans of the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate in the field of optical communications among satellites. The initial task of the station, equipped with a 1-meter aperture telescope, is to carry out in-orbit testing of laser telecommunication terminals on satellites in low orbits and in geostationary orbit. Since 2001, special garbage tracking has also been carried out in the geostationary orbit and in the GEO transfer orbit. The station has a large field camera, installed in the Ritchey-Chretien focus of the telescope, specially dedicated for this purpose. In addition, a third of the observation time is dedicated to astronomical research by ESA and IAC teams, which are responsible for installing their equipment in the different focus of the telescope.

 

• TAR Telescope (OT-IAC, Tenerife, Spain)

  The TAR (Remote Open Telescope, Telescopio Abierto Remoto) installation is a robotic observatory with two 42 cm diameter Centurion telescopes (TAR1 and TAR2), equipped with high-sensitivity FLI-Kepler sCMOS cameras.

• Telescope COM (Observatorio de Santa Maria de Montmagastrell, Spain)

This observatory works since 1991 and belongs to Josep M. Bosch. The telescope is a Schmidt-Cassegrain of 40 cm with f/10 equipped with a CCD SBIG STL 1001E camera.