Site Overview
The Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT) is Lowell Observatory's flagship facility at a dark-sky site approximately 40 miles southeast of Flagstaff on the Coconino National Forest. We support both in-person and remote observing, with the latter growing significantly in popularity following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Telescope Overview
The LDT sports a 4.3-m thin-meniscus primary mirror supported laterally and axially by an active optics system (AOS). The telescope rides on an elevation over azimuth mount. The LDT's pointing model provides ~2" accuracy over the entire sky down to 6º elevation, but the mount is capable of pointing to horizon.
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At the RC focus, a 5-port instrument cube is installed to allow for rapid intranight swapping between instruments (~5 mins). The through-port on the cube has a 0.5º diameter flattened field of view.
Scheduling Overview
LDT is classically scheduled by semester and does not support queue observing at this time. The typical scheduling unit is half-nights, but other units may be requested depending on the needs of the science program. Additionally, a given observing program may be spread across non-consecutive nights (or even the entire semester) for scientific or weather concerns.
A Target of Opportunity (ToO) program is available for request to take advantage of both time-sensitive targets and the rapid reconfigurability of the LDT's instruments.
Instrument Overview
LDT hosts three facility instruments and a suite of visitor / PI instruments. The facility instruments are available full-time, and the others have variable availability depending on port competition and PI projects.
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