Liverpool Telescope Operations 2019-2020
Lead Research Organisation:
Liverpool John Moores University
Department Name: Astrophysics Research Institute
Abstract
The Liverpool Telescope (LT ) (http://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/) is the world's largest and most sophisticated (in terms of range of science programmes, flexibility of scheduling, and sophistication of instrumentation) robotic telescope 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 100,000 observing requests from over 2,500 schools. The NSO currently works with over 4000 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 well over 1 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 46 citations/paper, three time the average for all astronomy papers; to date 15 such papers have appeared in the high-profile journals Nature or Science, these having on average 86 citations/paper.
The telescope has high impact science programmes in five key areas of time domain astrophysics:
* Spectroscopy simultaneous with in-situ spacecraft measurements (e.g. ESA Rosetta and NASA New Horizons)
* Exoplanet Characterization
* Cataclysmic Variables, Novae and Supernovae
* Gravitational Wave and Gamma Ray Burst counterparts
* Active Galactic Nuclei
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 and infrared photometry are offered with instruments and a software environment that are capable of sampling timescales from ~10 milliseconds 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 five years.
This application is for an STFC contribution over the period 2019-2020 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.
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 46 citations/paper, three time the average for all astronomy papers; to date 15 such papers have appeared in the high-profile journals Nature or Science, these having on average 86 citations/paper.
The telescope has high impact science programmes in five key areas of time domain astrophysics:
* Spectroscopy simultaneous with in-situ spacecraft measurements (e.g. ESA Rosetta and NASA New Horizons)
* Exoplanet Characterization
* Cataclysmic Variables, Novae and Supernovae
* Gravitational Wave and Gamma Ray Burst counterparts
* Active Galactic Nuclei
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 and infrared photometry are offered with instruments and a software environment that are capable of sampling timescales from ~10 milliseconds 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 five years.
This application is for an STFC contribution over the period 2019-2020 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.
Planned Impact
LT has a long tradition of strong industrial engagement. The initial build of the telescope was based around the establishment of a spinout company (TTL, Telescope Technologies Ltd) which was subsequently sold in 2005 to an ex-Google employee to build a global network of small (0.4 and 1 metre) robotic telescopes.
The project has ongoing strong links with a number of local engineering companies. Much of the precision engineering required for LT instrumentation is done in collaboration with the SME engineering firm "Senar". Through the Liverpool Telescope project Senar were contracted by the university-owned company TTL to build several parts for the telescope, resulting in the company upgrading its skills and machinery to deliver the high precision needed for astronomical instrumentation. The contract safeguarded a number of jobs at the time and the company received a grant from MAS (Manufacturing Institute, via the local council organization Wirral Direct) for the purchase of a new, more accurate, CNC lathe for precision machining. Their ongoing work for LT also features as part of their advertising, using the telescope as an example of a high-profile/high-technology client. Their reputation in precision engineering for astronomical applications over the past 10 years has led to contracts with other international observatories (e.g., the new WHT Auxiliary camera and a WEAVE contract) and with CERN, producing the chain links that carry cooling pipes and electrical cables for the LHC. This activity contributed to the rating of ARI impact in the 2nd quartile in REF2014.
Skills and knowledge transfer are furthered by the direct involvement of students (undergraduate and postgraduate) in development projects. The LT team has consistently included undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD students in instrument and software design and development with these projects forming the basis of several PhD theses. Most of these students have left academic research for wider industry.
LT has also had success in licensing software and hardware developed for the telescope to the Faulkes/LCOGT organization. License income of £160k plus telescope time worth an additional £180k on the LCO telescopes has been received by LJMU from this activity.
LT is a focus for a significant fraction of the extensive Public Engagement programme at ARI. As well as many talks and workshops to schools and the general public (e.g. in 2012/13 over 150 talks to over 10,000 people were given based on the LT) the LT is also key to the success of a suite of Distance Learning courses in Astronomy that attract around 200 students a year, many of whom have little or no prior experience of Higher Education.
The LT is also an important element in the Spaceport visitor attraction on the banks of the river Mersey. The attraction regularly exceeds visitor number predictions (currently at around 70,000 per year) and brings considerable income into a regeneration area. Using the standard STEAM model (Digest of Tourism Statistics, Dec. 2009 - The Mersey Partnership) for determining the economic benefits of tourism in the City Region for day visitors, this equates to a net gain of more than £2m per year. Spaceport also contributed towards the success of Mersey Ferries being ranked 1st in the City Region in 2008 - when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture - for a paid tourist attraction and an independent MORI Poll from 2006 found that 97% of visitors to Spaceport were either satisfied or very satisfied with their visit. Due to this success, the original targets for the regeneration have been met or exceeded. These include the creation of an estimated 50 new jobs, both direct and indirect, which equates to a gross value added of £1.4m pa to the City Region.
LT is the key resource of the National Schools Observatory, which has delivered over 100,000 unique observations to over 2,500 UK and Irish schools and over 1,000,000 website hits/year.
The project has ongoing strong links with a number of local engineering companies. Much of the precision engineering required for LT instrumentation is done in collaboration with the SME engineering firm "Senar". Through the Liverpool Telescope project Senar were contracted by the university-owned company TTL to build several parts for the telescope, resulting in the company upgrading its skills and machinery to deliver the high precision needed for astronomical instrumentation. The contract safeguarded a number of jobs at the time and the company received a grant from MAS (Manufacturing Institute, via the local council organization Wirral Direct) for the purchase of a new, more accurate, CNC lathe for precision machining. Their ongoing work for LT also features as part of their advertising, using the telescope as an example of a high-profile/high-technology client. Their reputation in precision engineering for astronomical applications over the past 10 years has led to contracts with other international observatories (e.g., the new WHT Auxiliary camera and a WEAVE contract) and with CERN, producing the chain links that carry cooling pipes and electrical cables for the LHC. This activity contributed to the rating of ARI impact in the 2nd quartile in REF2014.
Skills and knowledge transfer are furthered by the direct involvement of students (undergraduate and postgraduate) in development projects. The LT team has consistently included undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD students in instrument and software design and development with these projects forming the basis of several PhD theses. Most of these students have left academic research for wider industry.
LT has also had success in licensing software and hardware developed for the telescope to the Faulkes/LCOGT organization. License income of £160k plus telescope time worth an additional £180k on the LCO telescopes has been received by LJMU from this activity.
LT is a focus for a significant fraction of the extensive Public Engagement programme at ARI. As well as many talks and workshops to schools and the general public (e.g. in 2012/13 over 150 talks to over 10,000 people were given based on the LT) the LT is also key to the success of a suite of Distance Learning courses in Astronomy that attract around 200 students a year, many of whom have little or no prior experience of Higher Education.
The LT is also an important element in the Spaceport visitor attraction on the banks of the river Mersey. The attraction regularly exceeds visitor number predictions (currently at around 70,000 per year) and brings considerable income into a regeneration area. Using the standard STEAM model (Digest of Tourism Statistics, Dec. 2009 - The Mersey Partnership) for determining the economic benefits of tourism in the City Region for day visitors, this equates to a net gain of more than £2m per year. Spaceport also contributed towards the success of Mersey Ferries being ranked 1st in the City Region in 2008 - when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture - for a paid tourist attraction and an independent MORI Poll from 2006 found that 97% of visitors to Spaceport were either satisfied or very satisfied with their visit. Due to this success, the original targets for the regeneration have been met or exceeded. These include the creation of an estimated 50 new jobs, both direct and indirect, which equates to a gross value added of £1.4m pa to the City Region.
LT is the key resource of the National Schools Observatory, which has delivered over 100,000 unique observations to over 2,500 UK and Irish schools and over 1,000,000 website hits/year.
Publications
Graham M
(2019)
The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Alvey J
(2019)
Linking scalar dark matter and neutrino masses with IceCube 170922A
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Li Z
(2019)
PeV neutrinos from wind breakouts of type II supernovae
in Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy
Pastorello A
(2019)
Luminous red novae: Stellar mergers or giant eruptions?
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Aartsen M
(2019)
Search for steady point-like sources in the astrophysical muon neutrino flux with 8 years of IceCube data
in The European Physical Journal C
Prentice S
(2020)
SN 2018gjx reveals that some SNe Ibn are SNe IIb exploding in dense circumstellar material
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Steele I
(2020)
Confirmation of monoperiodicity above 20 s for two blue large-amplitude pulsators
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Turbet M
(2020)
A Review of Possible Planetary Atmospheres in the TRAPPIST-1 System.
in Space science reviews
Yao Y
(2020)
SN2019dge: A Helium-rich Ultra-stripped Envelope Supernova
in The Astrophysical Journal
Hébrard G
(2020)
Discovery and characterization of the exoplanets WASP-148b and c A transiting system with two interacting giant planets
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Williams S
(2020)
AT 2016dah and AT 2017fyp: the first classical novae discovered within a tidal stream
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lee Y
(2020)
Young Faithful: The Eruptions of EC 53 as It Cycles through Filling and Draining the Inner Disk
in The Astrophysical Journal
Cunningham V
(2020)
GRB 160625B: Evidence for a Gaussian-shaped Jet
in The Astrophysical Journal
Rahvar S
(2020)
Measuring limb darkening of stars in high-magnification microlensing events by the Finite Element Method
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ducrot E
(2020)
TRAPPIST-1: Global results of the Spitzer Exploration Science Program Red Worlds
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Yan L
(2020)
Helium-rich Superluminous Supernovae from the Zwicky Transient Facility
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Martinez L
(2020)
Progenitor properties of type II supernovae: fitting to hydrodynamical models using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Liu H
(2020)
Constraining the spacetime spin using time delay in stationary axisymmetric spacetimes
in The European Physical Journal C
Pidhorodetska D
(2020)
Detectability of Molecular Signatures on TRAPPIST-1e through Transmission Spectroscopy Simulated for Future Space-based Observatories
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Williams S
(2020)
AT 2019abn: multi-wavelength observations over the first 200 days
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Darnley M
(2020)
On a century of extragalactic novae and the rise of the rapid recurrent novae
in Advances in Space Research
Copperwheat C
(2020)
Characterization of a dual-beam, dual-camera optical imaging polarimeter
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cooke B
(2020)
Two Transiting Hot Jupiters from the WASP Survey: WASP-150b and WASP-176b
in The Astronomical Journal
Ho A
(2020)
SN 2020bvc: A Broad-line Type Ic Supernova with a Double-peaked Optical Light Curve and a Luminous X-Ray and Radio Counterpart
in The Astrophysical Journal
Nicholl M
(2020)
An outflow powers the optical rise of the nearby, fast-evolving tidal disruption event AT2019qiz
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Munday J
(2020)
The post-common-envelope binary central star of the planetary nebula ETHOS 1
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Fremling C
(2020)
The Zwicky Transient Facility Bright Transient Survey. I. Spectroscopic Classification and the Redshift Completeness of Local Galaxy Catalogs
in The Astrophysical Journal
Kasliwal M
(2020)
Kilonova Luminosity Function Constraints Based on Zwicky Transient Facility Searches for 13 Neutron Star Merger Triggers during O3
in The Astrophysical Journal
Gutiérrez C
(2020)
SN 2017ivv: two years of evolution of a transitional Type II supernova
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Fitzgerald K
(2020)
Introducing PyCross: PyCloudy Rendering Of Shape Software for pseudo 3D ionisation modelling of nebulae
in Astronomy and Computing
Blagorodnova N
(2020)
Progenitor, precursor, and evolution of the dusty remnant of the stellar merger M31-LRN-2015
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Friedman A
(2020)
Improved constraints on anisotropic birefringent Lorentz invariance and C P T violation from broadband optical polarimetry of high redshift galaxies
in Physical Review D
Wyrzykowski L
(2020)
Full orbital solution for the binary system in the northern Galactic disc microlensing event Gaia16aye
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Palladino A
(2020)
Neutrino Telescopes and High-Energy Cosmic Neutrinos
in Universe
Szkody P
(2020)
Cataclysmic Variables in the First Year of the Zwicky Transient Facility
in The Astronomical Journal
Ho A
(2020)
ZTF20aajnksq (AT 2020blt): A Fast Optical Transient at z ˜ 2.9 with No Detected Gamma-Ray Burst Counterpart
in The Astrophysical Journal
Harvey E
(2020)
Two new nova shells associated with V4362 Sagittarii and DO Aquilae
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Ackley K
(2020)
Observational constraints on the optical and near-infrared emission from the neutron star-black hole binary merger candidate S190814bv
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Zhang Z
(2020)
First discovery of an ultra-cool white dwarf benchmark in common proper motion with an M dwarf
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Miller A
(2020)
The Spectacular Ultraviolet Flash from the Peculiar Type Ia Supernova 2019yvq
in The Astrophysical Journal
Aartsen M
(2020)
Design and performance of the first IceAct demonstrator at the South Pole
in Journal of Instrumentation
Izzo L
(2020)
Broad-line type Ic SN 2020bvc Signatures of an off-axis gamma-ray burst afterglow
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Soumagnac M
(2020)
Early Ultraviolet Observations of Type IIn Supernovae Constrain the Asphericity of Their Circumstellar Material
in The Astrophysical Journal
Maíz Apellániz J
(2020)
Spatially resolved spectroscopy of close massive visual binaries with HST/STIS I. Seven O-type systems
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Clark P
(2020)
LSQ13ddu: a rapidly evolving stripped-envelope supernova with early circumstellar interaction signatures
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Andreoni I
(2020)
GROWTH on S190814bv: Deep Synoptic Limits on the Optical/Near-infrared Counterpart to a Neutron Star-Black Hole Merger
in The Astrophysical Journal
Gänsicke B
(2020)
Single magnetic white dwarfs with Balmer emission lines: a small class with consistent physical characteristics as possible signposts for close-in planetary companions
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cannizzaro G
(2020)
Extreme variability in an active galactic nucleus: Gaia16aax
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Huang K
(2020)
Perturbative deflection angle for signal with finite distance and general velocities
in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Description | Successful operation of the Liverpool Robotic Telescope. |
Exploitation Route | Operation of the telescope enables science exploitation by many UK STFC and international astronomers |
Sectors | Other |
URL | https://telescope.ljmu.ac.uk |
Title | robotic astronomy |
Description | procedures, hardware and software systems for the automation of astronomical observations. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | widespread adoption of robotic observing |
URL | https://telescope.livjm.ac.uk/ |