Astronomy:OGS Telescope

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OGS Telescope

The Optical Ground Station (OGS) telescope (or ESA Space Debris Telescope), installed in the Teide Observatory, has been built by Carl Zeiss. The telescope is ESA's Optical Ground Station forming a part of the Artemis experiment and is operated by the IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) and Ataman Science S.L.U.

The telescope is a 1 m Ritchey-Chretien / Coudé telescope with field of view of 0.7 degrees, supported by an English-built mount inside a dome 12.5 metre in diameter. Its main purposes are:

  1. to be the optical ground station of the Artemis telecommunications satellite (the project from which the telescope takes its name)
  2. to make surveys of space debris in different orbits around the Earth,
  3. to test observing strategies of near-Earth objects as part of ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme, and
  4. to make scientific astronomical night observations.

It is equipped with a cryogenically cooled mosaic CCD-Camera of 4k*4k pixels. The detection threshold is between 19th and 21st magnitude, which corresponds to a capability to detect space debris objects as small as 10 cm in the geostationary ring. As a large part of the observation time is dedicated to space debris surveys, in particular the observation of space debris in the geostationary ring and in geostationary transfer orbits, the term ESA Space Debris Telescope became used very frequently. Space debris surveys are carried out every month, centered on New Moon.

Since 2006, the telescope has also been used as a receiver station for quantum communication experiments (such as testing Bell inequalities, quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation), with the sender station being 143 km away in the observatory on La Palma.[1] This is possible because this telescope can be tilted to a near-horizontal position to point it at La Palma, which many large astronomical telescopes are unable to do.

List of discovered minor planets

EAS OGS has been credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 37 minor planets.[2] These are:

(231609) 2009 RV 10 September 2009 list
(241554) 2010 FA93 23 March 2010 list
(246849) 2010 FB48 22 March 2010 list
(251626) 2010 FM53 22 March 2010 list
(257422) 2010 FR47 22 March 2010 list
(257423) 2010 FM48 22 March 2010 list
284891 Kona 13 September 2009 list
(296587) 2009 RA26 13 September 2009 list
297005 Ellirichter 22 March 2010 list
(301679) 2010 FA48 22 March 2010 list
(312714) 2010 RR3 1 September 2010 list
(321480) 2009 RZ69 10 September 2009 list
(321810) 2010 RK4 1 September 2010 list
(325476) 2009 RY 10 September 2009 list
(325791) 2010 RX4 1 September 2010 list
(330873) 2009 RQ1 10 September 2009 list
332706 Karlheidlas 13 September 2009 list
(343557) 2010 FX47 22 March 2010 list
(343577) 2010 FF88 22 March 2010 list
(347299) 2011 OA28 1 June 2011 list
(356298) 2010 FT47 22 March 2010 list
(362429) 2010 RU4 1 September 2010 list
(365291) 2009 RO26 13 September 2009 list
(368098) 2013 BP70 6 June 2010 list
(369284) 2009 RQ26 13 September 2009 list
(381725) 2009 RP5 13 September 2009 list
(386618) 2009 RD26 13 September 2009 list
(398163) 2010 FS47 22 March 2010 list
(403532) 2010 FG88 22 March 2010 list
(419562) 2010 RF5 1 September 2010 list
420779 Świdwin 11 April 2013 list
(436317) 2010 FP47 22 March 2010 list
(438881) 2009 RD28 10 September 2009 list
(457818) 2009 RB58 10 September 2009 list
(463362) 2012 TB30 15 September 2012 list
(481993) 2009 RO27 13 September 2009 list
(482129) 2010 RC5 1 September 2010 list

See also

References

External links