| The ING Newsletter | No. 1, September 1999 |
| SCIENCE | TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION | OTHER NEWS FROM ING | TELESCOPE TIME |
Previous: Message from the Director | Up: Table of Contents | Next: The ING Board and the Instrumentation Working Group
The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes
The Isaac Newton Group of
Telescopes (ING) consists of the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope (WHT),
the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) and the 1.0m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope
(JKT), and is located 2,350m above sea level at the Roque de Los Muchachos
Observatory (ORM) on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The
WHT is the largest telescope in Western Europe.
The construction, operation, and development of the ING telescopes is the result of a collaboration between the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Eire. The site is provided by Spain, and in return Spanish astronomers receive 20 per cent of the observing time on the telescopes. The operation of the site is overseen by an International Scientific Committee, or Comité Científico Internacional (CCI).
A further 75 per cent of the observing time is shared by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The University of Porto (Portugal) has 28 nights of observing time on the JKT and access to the INT and WHT under open competition with other astronomers. The allocation of telescope time is determined by scientific merit. The remaining 5 per cent is reserved for large scientific projects to promote international collaborations between institutions of the CCI member countries.
The ING operates the telescopes
on behalf of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC)
of the United Kingdom and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk
Onderzoek (NWO) of the Netherlands.
 |
 |
The Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, which is the principal European northern hemisphere observatory, is operated on behalf of Spain by the Spanish Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), as the Teide Observatory on Tenerife is.
Previous: Message from the Director | Up: Table of Contents | Next: The ING Board and the Instrumentation Working Group
| SCIENCE | TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION | OTHER NEWS FROM ING | TELESCOPE TIME |