The Hexapod-Telescope (HPT) is a telescope located at

Cerro Armazones Observatory Cerro Armazones Observatory (Spanish: ''Observatorio Cerro Armazones,'' OCA; German: ''Observatorium Cerro Armazones,'' OCA) was an astronomical observatory owned and operated jointly by the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) and the Catholic Universit ...

in northern

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

. The Ritchey-Chrétien

reflecting telescope A reflecting telescope (also called a reflector) is a telescope that uses a single or a combination of curved mirrors that reflect light and form an image. The reflecting telescope was invented in the 17th century by Isaac Newton as an alternati ...

is notable for the design of the

telescope mount A telescope mount is a mechanical structure which supports a telescope. Telescope mounts are designed to support the mass of the telescope and allow for accurate pointing of the instrument. Many sorts of mounts have been developed over the year ...

. Instead of the typical mounting where the telescope moves on two rotating axes, the mirror end of the telescope is supported by six extensible struts, an arrangement known as a

Stewart platform A Stewart platform is a type of parallel manipulator that has six prismatic actuators, commonly hydraulic jacks or electric linear actuators, attached in pairs to three positions on the platform's baseplate, crossing over to three mounting poi ...

. This configuration allows the telescope to move in all six spatial degrees of freedom and also provides strong structural integrity. As a result, the ratio of bearing pressure and its own weight is very high. Furthermore, the six-leg structure allows for a very precise positioning and repeatability. The disadvantage of the system is that controlling and aiming a hexapod-mounted telescope is much more complex than with conventional telescope mounts. The mounting was designed by engineers of the company Vertex, in collaboration with astronomers of the Astronomy Institute of the

Ruhr University Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...

(AIRUB) in Germany. Led by Prof. Rolf Chini, the HPT was thoroughly tested at AIRUB. In 2006, it was moved to its new location on

in the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the ...

in Chile. AIRUB, in collaboration with the Astronomy Department of the

Catholic University of the North Catholic University of the North ( Spanish: ''Universidad Católica del Norte'' (UCN)) is a university in Chile. It is part of the Chilean Traditional Universities. It is located in Antofagasta, Chile. The Catholic University of the North was ...

(UCN), is developing an observatory there. A new control building was built next to the HPT on the summit of Cerro Murphy, a subsidiary peak of Cerro Armazones. Together with the Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl, AIRUB developed the Bochum Echelle Spectrograph for the Optical (BESO) for the HPT. It is a copy of the Fiber-fed Extended Range Optical Spectrograph (FEROS) operated by the

European Southern Observatory The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 mem ...

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite web , url=http://www.astro.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Astrophysik/HPT_en.html , title=Hexapod - Telescope , publisher=Ruhr-Universität Bochum Astronomisches Institut , accessdate=2015-04-24 {{cite web , url=http://www.astro.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Astrophysik/BESO_en.html , title=Bochum Echelle Spectrograph for the Optical (BESO) , publisher=Ruhr-Universität Bochum Astronomisches Institut , accessdate=2015-04-24 {{cite journal , doi=10.1117/12.671120 , title=BESO: a high-resolution spectrograph for the Hexapod-Telescope, Proceedings of SPIE , date=2006 , last1=Steiner , first1=Ingo , volume=6269 , pages=62692W, s2cid=121482999 {{cite journal , bibcode=2000RvMA...13..257C , title=The Hexapod Telescope -- A Never-ending Story , last1=Chini , first1=Rolf , volume=13 , date=2000 , pages=257 , journal=Reviews in Modern Astronomy 13: New Astrophysical Horizons

External links

AIRUB - Observatorio Cerro Armazones
at Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Observatorío Cerro Armazones (OCA)
at Universidád Católica del Norte
Hexapod for ALMA Radio Telescopes' secondary mirror
Telescopes

See also

References

Further reading

External links