The Nordic Optical Telescope ( NOT ) is an astronomical telescope located at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory , La Palma in the Canary Islands . The telescope saw first light in 1988, and was officially inaugurated during September 1989. Regular observing started in 1990. It is funded by Denmark , Sweden , Norway , Finland , and (since 1997) Iceland . Access is provided directly to astronomers of the funding countries, and of all nationalities through international time allocation committees.
8-574: The main mirror has a diameter of 2.56 metres (101 in). The optical forming was done at the optical laboratory at the Tuorla Observatory , on mirror blanks made of Zerodur at Schott Glaswerke in Mainz, Germany. While the NOT was designed as a passive telescope, with the mirror sufficiently thick to keep its shape even without an active feedback loop, its mirror was designed to be suspended on
16-399: A pneumatic support system. The designers had planned that this and the flexibility of the mirror would allow for the implementation of a so-called active optics system, a feature that was then under development for ESO 's New Technology Telescope . In 1992, such an active optics system was installed at the NOT. The NOT operates three instruments that can be mounted -only one at a time- under
24-662: Is intended to be mounted permanently at the Cassegrain focus, providing imaging and spectroscopic capabilities both in the full optical and near-infrared range. List of largest optical telescopes in the 20th century Tuorla Observatory Tuorla Observatory is the Department of Astronomy at the University of Turku , southwest Finland . It is the largest astronomical research institute in Finland. Together with
32-751: The Nordic Optical Telescope . The one meter Dall-Kirkham reflector is the largest optical telescope in Finland. Since October 2008, the Tuorla Planetarium has been operating next to the observatory. The main area of research in Tuorla is active galactic nuclei ; about half of the researchers are working on the topic. Other areas are dark matter , cosmology , astrodynamics , binary stars , solar neighborhood, solar physics and astrobiology . The optical laboratory (Opteon) produces high quality optics for telescopes. In particular,
40-702: The Space Research Laboratory at the Physics Department of the University of Turku, it forms the Väisälä Institute of Space Physics and Astronomy (VISPA). Tuorla Observatory was established on April 29, 1952 by professor Yrjö Väisälä . A new observatory was needed because the old Iso-Heikkilä Observatory close to the centre of Turku started suffering from heavy light pollution from the nearby city and especially
48-428: The Cassegrain focus: There are two more instruments, permanently mounted on a folded-Cassegrain configuration. Retractable folding mirrors allow to switch in short time from the main instrument to either of them. The NOT has been host to a number of instruments on a "visitor" status. A new instrument for the NOT is currently under development, under the working name of NOT Transient Explorer (NTE). This new instrument
56-445: The industrial areas to the south of the observatory. A new place was found in Tuorla, which is one of the small villages in (former) Piikkiö municipality. It is located about 12 kilometres from Turku towards Helsinki . The first part of the observatory contained a main building and a 51 meter long tunnel for optical research. Due to the growing size of the department, new parts to it have been built in 1989 and 2002. Starting in 1974,
64-431: The observatory was part of the Physics Department until 1991 when it became again an independent research institute of the university. In 2009 the observatory merged again with the physics department, and it is now one of the seven laboratories of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Turku. The observatory has several telescopes located around its main buildings and also uses international telescopes like
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