DCT - A New 4.2-meter Telescope for Surveys and More

Details DCT - A New 4.2-meter Telescope for Surveys and More DCT - A New 4.2-meter Telescope for Surveys and More

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.5108m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #51.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.516

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The Discovery Channel Telescope, currently under construction at a new observatory site in Northern Arizona, is fully funded and slated to become operational in 2010. Wholly owned by Lowell Observatory and sponsored by Discovery Communications, the DCT will be a powerful facility for Solar System research. The telescope has been designed to be highly versatile. When equipped with its 2-degree-diameter FOV prime focus camera, the DCT will be able to efficiently survey the sky with filters and cadences expressly designed for the research project at hand. In a deep NEA survey, for example, Bowell, et al. have shown that NEAs could be detected at a rate of 20-40 per hour. Similarly, in a KBO survey, one would expect the DCT to deliver approximately an order of magnitude improvement in discovery rate compared to that achieved by the Deep Ecliptic Survey team with the MOSAIC cameras on the Mayall and Blanco Telescopes. However, DCT is not exclusively a wide-field imaging telescope. The telescope can be readily switched to a Ritchey-Chretien configuration and the light delivered to either the "Cassegrain" or Nasmyth focus. In these modes, the telescope will be equipped for optical and infrared spectroscopy and for high-resolution imaging.
The cost of the Discovery Channel Telescope, including all of the site development and infrastructure (e.g, a mirror coating facility) will be approximately $40M. All of these funds are from private sources. Based on design studies by Goodrich and E2V, the cost of the prime focus camera is estimated to be less than $15M. Consequently, the DCT offers a relatively low cost avenue to a near-term substantial increase in survey capability, while also facilitating physical studies using a diverse set of spectroscopic and imaging instruments.

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