- Telescopio Nazionale Galileo
Infobox Telescope
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name = Telescopio Nazionale Galileo
caption = View of the telescope housing from outside, with GranTeCan under construction in the background.
organization = Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF)
location =Roque de los Muchachos Observatory , La Palma (Canary Islands)
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altitude =
weather =
wavelength = optical, near-infrared
built = 1998 (first light)
website = http://www.tng.iac.es/
style = reflector
diameter = 3.58m
angular_resolution =
area = ~12m²
focal_length =
mounting = altazimuthal
dome = up and overThe Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, or TNG, is a 3.58m telescope located on the island of San Miguel de La Palma (or, more simply,La Palma ), in the Canary Islands archipelago. It is one of the largest telescopes hosted by theRoque de los Muchachos Observatory , one of the most important observing sites in the northern hemisphere. It is now operated by the "Fundación Galileo Galilei, Fundación Canaria", a no-profit institution which manages the telescope on behalf of INAF, the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics. The telescope saw its first light in1998 .Observations at the TNG can be proposed through the Italian Time Allocation Committee (TAC) which assigns, based on the scientific merit of the proposals, 75% of the available time. The rest of the time is at disposal of the Spanish and international astronomical communities. The TNG is open to new proposals two times a year, typically in March-April and September-October.
Technical characteristics
The TNG is an altazimuthal reflecting telescope with a Ritchey-Chretien optical configuration and a flat tertiary mirror feeding two opposite Nasmyth foci. It has a design derived from the
New Technology Telescope (NTT), an ESO 4-meters class telescope located in La Silla (Chile). Therefore, the optical quality of the telescope is ensured by anactive optics system performing real-time corrections of the optical components and compensating, in particular, for the deformations of the primary mirror, which is too thin to be completely rigid. Nevertheless, unlike the NTT, the TNG is also equipped with anadaptive optics system providing diffraction limited images in the near-infrared band.The interface between the telescope fork and the instruments at both Nasmyth foci is provided by two rotator/adapters. Their main function is to compensate for the field rotation by a mechanical counter rotation. The best quality of the TNG is that all the available instruments are permanently mounted at the telescope. The first focal station, Nasmyth A, supports the direct imaging camera (OIG), the near-infrared camera-spectrometer (NICS) and the Adaptive Optics module (AdOpt@TNG). The second focal station, Nasmyth B, supports the optical multimode instrument (DOLoRes) and the high resolution spectrograph (SARG).
The science based on observational data from the TNG is varied. Proposed observing programs go from the study of the planets and minor bodies of the
solar system up to researches of cosmological interest (e.g. large-scale structure of the Universe and systems of galaxies).TNG public data archive
The IA2 (The Italian Astronomical Archive Center) has implemented the TNG Long-Term Archive (LTA). It makes possible the use of the TNG public data, searching and downloading them from the web portal: [http://wwwas.oats.inaf.it/IA2/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=27 TNG Archive] .
ee also
External links
* [http://www.tng.iac.es/ TNG Home Page]
* [http://wwwas.oats.inaf.it/IA2/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=27 TNG Long Term Archive]
* [http://www.iac.es/gabinete/orm/indice.html Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos]
* [http://www.tng.iac.es/publications/ Scientific publications based on data taken at the TNG]
* [http://wwwas.oats.inaf.it/IA2/ IA2 (The Italian Astronomical Archive Center)]
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