Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope

The Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope or JKT is a 1m optical telescope named for the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on La Palma in the Canary Islands. Funded jointly by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom with planning throughout the 1970s, construction of the JKT was completed in 1983 with the first photographic plate taken in March 1984. It can be used with two different focal points and different instruments, although by 1998 this was refined to one CCD imaging instrument. The telescope weighs nearly 40 metric tons, in total, according to JKT documentation from the Isaac Newton Group website.

Now superseded by more recent and larger telescopes it was taken out of service as a common-user facility as of August 2003. The Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) is now working to enable the JKT as a remotely operated observatory, with the first new observations scheduled for January 2015.

External links

• The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING) JKT Page
• The Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy

See also

• List of largest optical telescopes in the 20th century

Coordinates: 28°45′41″N 17°52′41″W / 28.76139°N 17.87806°W / 28.76139; -17.87806