Anglo-Australian Telescope

The Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) is a 3.9 m equatorially mounted telescope operated by the Australian Astronomical Observatory and situated at the Siding Spring Observatory, Australia at an altitude of a little over 1100 m. According to a Sydney Morning Herald article, in 2009 the telescope was ranked 5th out of the world's optical telescopes, and was considered the most scientifically productive optical telescope in the world.^[1] The telescope was commissioned in 1974 with a view to allowing high quality observations of the sky from the southern hemisphere (at the time, most major telescopes were located in the northern hemisphere).

It is jointly funded by Australia and the United Kingdom, with observing time made available to astronomers worldwide. It is equipped with a number of instruments, including the Two Degree Field facility (2dF), a robotic optical fibre positioner for obtaining spectroscopy of up to 400 objects over a 2° field of view simultaneously; the University College London Échelle Spectrograph (UCLES), a high-resolution optical spectrograph which has been used to discover many extrasolar planets; and IRIS2, a wide-field infrared camera and spectrograph.

The AAT was one of the last large telescopes built with an equatorial mount. More recent large telescopes have instead adopted the more compact and mechanically stable altazimuth mount. The AAT was however one of the very first telescopes to be fully computer-controlled, and set new standards for pointing and tracking accuracy.

Contemporaries on commissioning

The AAT debuted at about 3rd largest in the world, just a little smaller and later then the Mayall 4m, but the AAT viewed the southern sky.

See also

• List of largest optical reflecting telescopes

References

External links

• Official website
• Online catalogue of building project papers (part of the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives held at Cambridge University Library)