HIMALAYAN CHANDRA TELESCOPE
Mt. Saraswati, Hanle
(Deadlines: 1 March; 1 July; 1 November)
The 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) at
the Indian Astronomical
Observatory (IAO), Mt. Saraswati, Digpa-ratsa Ri, Hanle at an altitude of
4500 m (15000 ft) above msl is operated by the Indian
Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore. It is remotely operated using
a dedicated satellite communication link from the Centre
for Research & Education in Science & Technology (CREST), Indian
Institute of Astrophysics, Hosakote, about 35 km northeast of Bangalore. The
Himalayan Faint Object Spectrograph Camera (HFOSC) and the
Near-infrared camera are available for regular observations. The Telescope
is available to the astronomical community, though some time is reserved for
observations of Target of Opportunity programmes and
service observations.
Guest astronomers may need to accomodate such programmes in a part of their
allotted time, and will be compensated suitably in subsequent allotments.
The guest
observers are welcome to participate and collaborate on such programmes
undertaken during the time allotted to them.
Some time will be used for preventive maintenance of the
telescope and instruments (scheduled around full moon), and for site
characterization activity (e.g. site extinction).
The HCT Time Allocation Committee (HTAC) has been
constituted by the Director, IIA, with A.K. Pati (Chairman), T.P. Prabhu,
M.V. Mekkaden, G.C. Anupama, B.E. Reddy, S. Sengupta, P.S. Parihar and P.Sreekumar (ISAC) as members. HTAC invites observing proposals from astronomers.
Proposals are called for three times a year for the cycle periods January-April;
May-August; September-December. The deadlines are: 1 March (May-Aug); 1 July (Sep-Dec); 1 Nov (Jan-Apr).
Guest observers can operate the telescope and instrument
from CREST using the satellite communication link. Telescope operators are
not generally
available at present, but the astronomers at CREST and engineers from IAO will
introduce the guest observers to the user interfaces for operation and to the
procedures for downloading the data during the day. There could be occasional
problems at night which can be attended to by experts only during the following
day.
The current performance of the telescope is:
Pointing accuracy: 3
arcsec rms
Tracking accuracy:
1.38 arcsec (mean) over 10 minutes (open loop)
Image quality: 0.7
arcsec diameter (80% power)
Note: If the autoguider is not used, integration times of only
10 to 20 minutes are possible, depending on the location of the object in the
sky.
Further information on the site, telescope and instruments may be obtained at
http://www.iiap.res.in/iao/iao.html.
Proposals and queries may be sent to htac@iiap.res.in.