Liverpool Telescope Operations 2023-2026

The Liverpool Telescope (LT ) (https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/) is the world's largest and most sophisticated robotic telescope (in terms of range of science programmes, flexibility of scheduling, and sophistication of instrumentation) with a dual role to carry out internationally competitive research and deliver the key observing resource to the National Schools Observatory. The NSO offers school children near-immediate access to a world-class observatory. Since its launch in 2004, this has led to over 200,000 observing requests from over 4,000 schools. The NSO currently works with over 4,000 teachers throughout the UK and Ireland. At the core of the NSO is the website which provides support material for a range of subjects and receives over 3 million hits each year.

Since operations began in 2004, LT has specialised in delivering high impact results in time domain astrophysics. Indeed, the observatory is unique in actively encouraging rapid-response and difficult-to-schedule monitoring projects from the U.K. and Spanish communities. Refereed publications that include LT data typically average 66 citations/paper, four times the average for all astronomy papers; to date 27 such papers have appeared in the high-profile journals Nature or Science, these having on average 222 citations/paper.

The telescope has high impact science programmes in five key areas of time domain astrophysics:

* Spectroscopic and photometric classification and monitoring of transients (Supernovae, Novae, Cataclysmic Variables...) from wide field optical surveys.
* Immediate response to Gamma Ray Burst events detected by Swift and Fermi.
* Rapid follow-up of candidate optical counterparts to multimessenger detections.
* Long term monitoring of time variable phenomena, such as active galactic nuclei.
* Time resolved characterisation of variable stars, binaries, transiting exoplanets and Solar System objects.

From the outset, the goal has been to provide a wide variety of instrumentation to cater for the broad interests of the LJMU and U.K./Spanish communities. Currently, optical photometry, spectroscopy and polarimetry are offered with instruments and a software environment that are capable of sampling timescales from <1 second to >10 years. A continuous programme of instrument upgrades has been aggressively pursued throughout the last decade. This has kept the facility competitive and ensures its position at the forefront of time domain astronomy for at least the next three years, after which we plan to transition to a joint operations model with the 4m New Robotic Telescope.

This application is for an STFC contribution over the period 2023-2026 to the funding for the maintenance and operation of the Liverpool Telescope, and hence the continuation of its role as a major resource both for the LJMU Astrophysics Research Institute and the wider UK community.