| Alternative names | United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope |
|---|---|
| Location(s) | New South Wales, AUS |
| Coordinates | 31°16′20″S149°04′16″E / 31.272231°S 149.071233°E /-31.272231; 149.071233 |
| Organization | Australian Astronomical Observatory Royal Observatory |
| First light | June 1973 |
| Diameter | 1.24 metres (4 ft 1 in)[1] |
| Website | www |
  Location of UK Schmidt Telescope | |
TheUK Schmidt Telescope (UKST) is a 1.24 metreSchmidt telescope operated by theAustralian Astronomical Observatory (formerly the Anglo-Australian Observatory); it is located adjacent to the 3.9 metreAnglo-Australian Telescope atSiding Spring Observatory,Australia. It is very similar to theSamuel Oschin telescope in California.[2] The telescope can detect objects down tomagnitude 21 after an hour ofexposure on photographic plates.[3]
It was originally built and operated by the United Kingdom, starting from 1973, and was merged with the former Anglo-Australian Observatory in 1988. It has been wholly operated by Australia since the UK withdrew from the AAO in 2010 (though the name is unchanged).
The UKST is a Schmidt camera, with a design based on the Oschin Schmidt Telescope. It is a survey telescope with a 6° by 6°field of view, originally imaged onto a 35 cm square glass photographic plate, and was the primary source of optical survey data in the southern sky from the 1970s to after 2000. The original sky survey plates were digitally scanned by theSpace Telescope Science Institute to create the Guide Star Catalog for theHubble Space Telescope, and theDigitized Sky Survey.
Although the UKST was originally used to takephotographs of the sky, traditional photographic glass (and film) became largely superseded by large electronicCCD detectors in the late 1990s, and after 2000 the UKST was used mostly formulti-object spectroscopy with the 6 degree Field (6dF) instrument. 6dF uses a robot to position up to 150optical fibres on a metal plate mounted at thefocal plane of the UKST, which then carry light from the targets to aspectrograph which sits on the floor of the dome. The6dF Galaxy Survey (6dFGS), aredshift survey of 120,000infrared-selectedgalaxies was completed in 2005, and from 2003–2013 the UKST then carried out theRAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) to measure theradial velocities andmetallicities of around to 0.5 million stars in theMilky Way Galaxy.
Two new spectroscopic surveys called TAIPAN and Funnelweb are planned post-2015.
