 The Mercator Telescope as seen from the top of the Swedish Solar Telescope. | |
| Location(s) | La Palma,Atlantic Ocean, international waters |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 28°45′43″N17°52′39″W / 28.7619°N 17.8775°W /28.7619; -17.8775 |
| Diameter | 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) |
  Location of Mercator Telescope | |
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TheMercator Telescope is a 1.2mtelescope at theObservatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos onLa Palma. It is operated by theKatholieke Universiteit Leuven (Leuven University), Belgium, in collaboration with the Observatory of theUniversity of Geneva and named afterGerard Mercator, famous cartographer.
The telescope was completed in the year 2000 for an exoplanet research program.[1]
The telescope contains two different measuring devices. First of all, there is theMeropeIICCD camera. This camera has a size of 2k by 6kpixels Frame Transfer detector originally designed for ESA's canceledEddington space mission. The filters used together with this camera are according to the so-calledgeneva photometric system. The second instrument on the Mercator Telescope is theHERMES echellespectrograph. It covers a wavelength range between 380 and 875nm with a spectral resolution of R~85000.[2]
TheP7photometer was active from May 2001 until July 2008. The photometer measured in the 7 band Geneva photometric system. It measured the star in one channel and the sky in another so that the sky can be subtracted. The filter wheel is turning at a rate of 4Hz, changing between the filters of the photometric system.
The SwissEuler 1.2m Telescope and the Mercator Telescope were part of theSouthern Sky extrasolar Planet search Programme which has discovered numerous extrasolar planets.[3]
The Hermes spectrograph was used to monitor the StarDelta Cephei in the 2010s.[4] The data seemed to suggest a previously unknown stellar companion.[4] The Hermes spectrograph for Mercator was in development from at least 2004, and is a "high-resolution fiber-fed echelle spectrograph" type of design.[5]
In 2012, the MAIA instrument for astroseismology was installed.[6] MAIA, also called the Mercator Advanced Imager for Astroseismology uses CCD to image in three passbands.[6] Some of the technology was developed for a space telescope called theEddington mission, which was however cancelled and thus not sent into space at that time.[6]