A linear optical model for 30 m class astronomical telescopes is discussed. Our approach to modeling the optical performance of the telescope is an extension of the line-of-sight analysis to incorporate low order image aberrations. The model describes the optical path difference at the telescope exit pupil as a linear combination of primary and secondary mirror displacements and deformations in...

With the establishment of the AUT University 12m radio telescope at Warkworth, New Zealand has now become a part of the international Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) community. A major product of VLBI observations are images in the radio domain of astronomical objects such as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Using large geographical separations between radio antennas, very high angular re...

Alongside its role in astronomical research, the newly commissioned 32-m radio telescope is being used as an outreach tool for astronomy education Ghana. The observatory also serves a facility international postgraduate programmes.

The first images of astronomical objects have been obtained with a telescope exploiting wavefront compensation with adaptive optics where the reference beacon was generated by laser excitation of mesospheric sodium. This was done using the FASTTRAC II low-order adaptive optics system at the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT). FASTTRAC II is a prototype for a full-scale adaptive optics system under...

The planetary nebula M94–20 in the Large Magellanic Cloud was serendipitously observed with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the Hubble Space Telescope Archival Pure Parallel Program. We present spatially resolved imaging and spectral data of the nebula and compare them with ground based data, including detection of several emission lines f...

FEROS is a fiber-fed bench-mounted prism-crossdispersed echelle spectrograph for the ESO 1.52-m telescope at La Silla. It works in quasi Littrow mode and in white pupil configuration. For the object and the nearby sky, the complete optical spectrum from 370–860 nm is recorded in one exposure with a resolving power of R = 48,000 by the use of a two-beam, two-slice image slicer. A first concept o...