New filters for the Joan Oró Telescope

The Montsec Observatory has installed a new set of filters on the Joan Oró Telescope (TJO), the largest telescope in Catalonia, with a 0.8-meter diameter primary mirror and a 6.15-meter automatic dome. The set of filters will serve to improve the performance of the telescope.

The Montsec Observatory is an infrastructure managed by the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).

The Joan Oró Telescope performs a wide variety of observations related to different fields of astronomy, such as the search for exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), the study of variable stars, the monitoring of asteroids, and many others. Its main advantage is the flexibility of the modes of operation, which allows the monitoring of objects for long periods of time, as well as the rapid reaction capacity, potentially less than a minute. The TJO receives its name in honor of the Lleida biochemist Joan Oró i Florensa, one of the most prominent researchers in studies on the origin of life.

The telescope’s main observing instrument is the LAIA camera, which now has a new set of photometric filters. Filters of this type are used in astronomy as standards that allow different colors of light to pass through, specifically certain ranges of wavelengths.

The new filters meet standards used at other observatories around the world. Specifically, the filters installed are from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) system. Unlike other filter systems, these cover non-overlapping spectral bands, allowing better color discrimination and more accurate characterization of star properties. Its main scientific applications are in the fields of astrophysics related to the study of stellar evolution, such as supernovae, chemistry of stars or binary systems. The TJO will have gray bands (green, red, and two near-infrared bands).

A new H-alpha filter has also been incorporated, which selects a very narrow band of the hydrogen emission spectrum, centered on a red line that receives that name (H-alpha). The study of light in this spectral line is closely related to the characterization of the chromospheric activity of stars, as well as star formation processes and the observation of emission nebulae or HII regions.

All these filters are added to those that were already operative (of the system called ‘Johnson-Cousins’, which covers the ultraviolet to the infrared), completing up to 11 possible bands for the images obtained with the TJO.

The new filters already installed in the wheel that is part of the LAIA instrument of the Joan Oró Telescope. (Photo: IEEC)

More advances in the Joan Oró Telescope

During the last few weeks, the TJO has launched a new automatic planning system for observations in real time. This is an essential part of TJO’s robotic operations, and with the latest enhancements it allows observations configured by users to be executed almost immediately, even at all hours of the night.

A sample of this application was the monitoring of the asteroid 2023 CX1, a few hours after it was discovered and before it impacted the Earth’s atmosphere in the north of France in the early hours of February 13. The entry into the atmosphere of 2023 CX1 was also captured live by the cameras of the Montsec Observatory. Improvements in monitoring the environment, both through sky surveillance cameras and a broad and robust system of meteorological sensors, are another significant advance that complements and facilitates the TJO’s robotic observations. The telescope control system has redundant information on meteorological parameters such as wind, clouds, humidity or rain, which allows it to reliably decide when to stop or continue observations depending on the weather and the state of the telescope. darling. (Source: IEEC)