The New Robotic Telescope (NRT), the 4-metre, next-generation Liverpool Telescope (LT), will be located on La Palma, Canary Islands. The design and development of the world’s largest robotic telescope, with a slew speed of approximately 10 degrees/second, poses challenges that have resulted in innovative design concepts, including the scheduling algorithms used for optimal science efficiency. We present the latest updates for the NRT project, focusing, in particular, on the status of the observing model which is being adapted from the existing LT model. The catalogue of LT data taken over the past 18 years is being used to model the observing behaviour of the facility and to act as input data for the future NRT scheduling algorithm. This algorithm will combine the existing LT observing model with a new facility Key Science Program, which will conduct rapid-response spectroscopic classifications of a variety of survey targets, transient alerts and variables.
HiPERCAM is a quintuple-beam imager that saw first light on the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in October 2017 and on the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) in February 2018. The instrument uses re- imaging optics and 4 dichroic beamsplitters to record ugriz (300–1000 nm) images simultaneously on its five CCD cameras. The detectors in HiPERCAM are frame-transfer devices cooled thermo-electrically to 90°C, thereby allowing both long-exposure, deep imaging of faint targets, as well as high-speed (over 1000 windowed frames per second) imaging of rapidly varying targets. In this paper, we report on the as-built design of HiPERCAM, its first-light performance on the GTC, and some of the planned future enhancements.
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