April 19, 2004
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A 4.1-meter Telescope Built and Operated as a Brazil/USA partnership.
Comments and
suggestions:
webmast@lna.br
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What is the SOAR Telescope - (SOuthern Astrophysical Research
Telescope)?
The project is a
partnership between Brazil represented by CNPq and USA by the University of
North Carolina (UNC), Michigan State University (MSU) and the National Optical Astronomy
Observatories (NOAO).
SOAR is an f/16 Ritchey-Chrétien optical design delivering an 8 arcminute diameter field of view for science with a
50-Hertz tip-tilt stabilized image
The telescope has dual multi-bay Nasmyth observing ports on the sides of
the telescope structure and three bent Cassegrain ports within the
telescope itself. The incoming light beam is directed to a specific
instrument with the tertiary mirror turret and subsequent fold mirrors.
Each Nasmyth port can support an 8-meter telescope class instrument, which
allows the SOAR partners to set-up shared use of appropriate instruments.
SOAR is situated on Cerro Pachón at an altitude of 2,700 meters above sea level, at the Chilean Andes. The telescope and its white spherical dome sit a few hundred meters from the neighboring 8-meter Gemini South telescope, and within visual range of NOAO’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.