Progress Report for the KAO 1.0 meter Robotic Telescope

Abstract

Korea Astronomy Observatory (KAO) is working to rebuild a 1.0-m robotic telescope in collaboration with a company (Astronomical Consultants & Equipment, Inc. or ACE). The telescope is being totally refurbished to make a fully automatic telescope which can operate in both interactive an fully autonomous robotic modes. This paper describes the design concepts and the work completed. The telescope is an f/7.5 Ritchey-Chretien system mounted on an equatorial fork with friction drives capable of high slewing (5°/s²) and high resolution tracking. The control software manages the entire telescope, instruments and observatory. In interactive local and remote modes the observer can manually enter coordinates or retrieve them from a database. In robotic mode the telescope controller downloads requests from users and creates a schedule. The telescope will be equipped with a CCD camera and will be available over the internet.