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ABOUT HANLE

HANLE SITE

A T OBSERVATORY

2M TELESCOPE

OPTICAL CCD IMAGER

NEAR IR IMAGER

HFOSC

HAGAR TELESCOPE

RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

IMAGE GALLERY

2M OPTICAL INFRARED TELESCOPE

First light obtained on September 26, 2000
Telescope Released for Science Observations Beginning 2003 May

A 2-m aperture optical-infrared telescope, the Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) manufactured by the EOS Technologies Inc., Tuscon, Arizona, USA is installed at IAO. The telescope is remotely operated from CREST, Hosakote, via a dedicated satellite link.

The telescope is equipped with 3 science instruments which are mounted on an instrument mount cube at the cassegrain focus of the telescope. The instrument mount cube has four side ports and an on-axis port, which makes all three instruments available mounted on the telescope. The instruments currently available are the Himalaya Faint Object Spectrograph (HFOSC), the near-IR imager, and the optical CCD imager.

Telescope Specifications : current performance

Aperture 2.01 meters
Mirror Material ULE
Optics Ritchey-Chretien
Mount Altitude over azimuth
Focus Cassegrain; provision for Nasmyth
F-ratio f/1.75 primary; f/9 Cassegrain
Image Scale 11.5 arcsec/mm
Field of View 7 arcmin; 30arcmin with corrector
Image quality (zenith) 80% power < 0.33 arcsec dia; 90% power < 0.73 arcsec dia
Jitter & periodic errors < 0.25 arcsec on each axis
Pointing accuracy < 0.45 arcsec over 17 arcsec move;
< 1.5 arcsec for > 10 deg move