On Monday 17th January 2000, the Director, along with other VSS Officers, attended a meeting near Liverpool arranged by Richard Miles and professional astronomers from Liverpool John Moores University (JMU) to discuss this opportunity. All in all 19 amateurs and 8 professionals attended the meeting. I came away with the feeling that we have a very great opportunity to further, not just astronomy but, of course, amateur astronomy in particular.
Richard has already sent out a flyer which appeared at the recent 'Astrofest' exhibition in London organised by the magazine Astronomy Now. It is also available on the Web site which has been especially prepared by Richard (see address below).
Very briefly, the project was conceived, in its present form, by Professor Mike Bode and colleagues at JMU, the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM) and PPARC. They have come up with the idea of building a 2-metre robotic telescope which will be housed on La Palma alongside the William Herschel and Isaac Newton telescopes. Funding for the project has come largely from The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Probably of more interest to the amateur community is that five percent of the observing time has been set aside for public education, part of which will be given over to amateur astronomers who may submit suitable applications (see below). Whilst 5% may not seem much, when put into context it is a fair amount. For example, supposing that La Palma has 300 clear nights per year at an average 8 hours per night that is 2,400 hours. Five percent of this is 120 hours. Even if amateurs only get part of this, it is to be compared with perhaps only 5 nights of observing that a professional might get for any given proposal - if he’s lucky!
Initially, the telescope will be equipped with a 2Kx2K back-illuminated CCD with a field of view of 4.7 arcmin square. First light for the Liverpool Telescope (LT) is currently scheduled for 6th October 2000, and full robotic operation is planned to start in February 2001; amateurs could be observing with this telescope by March 2001.
To assess whether an amateur project is worthwhile, it is the intention to set up a Pro-Am Time Allocation Group (PATAG), which will be largely modelled on the groups used by professionals, but consisting largely of amateurs.
Part of the afternoon session was given over to proposals from amateurs, and these included (in no specific order!): Photometry of AGNs; follow up observations of Novae, Supernovae and flare stars etc; high-speed photometry of Cataclysmic Variables (including Dwarf Novae) and photometry of variable star sequences.
This is a tremendous opportunity for amateurs and it is hoped that it will also produce a range of articles and even full scientific papers.
This is only the first of these new 2-metre robotic telescopes; during the tour of the workshops that we were given, we saw two more identical telescopes. However, the LT is the first.
Further details are available on the BAA Web site.