The Nordic Optical TelescopeThe Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) is a 2.56m telescope located at the Spanish "Roque de los Muchachos" Observatory (ORM), La Palma, Canarias, Spain. The owners of the telescope and the organization behind the telescope are Aarhus University (AU), Denmark and the University of Turku (UTU), Finland. The shared ownership is regulated via an agreement concerning the ownership and operations of the Nordic Optical Telescope signed by AU and UTU in 2019. UTU is the legal entity behind the telescope and its facilities located at the ORM, and AU is the legal entity behind the organizational structure (including hiring of staff, and operations and maintenance of the telescope and instrumentation).The NOT is at present operating under a set of agreements between five Nordic partner universities that aim at ensuring access to the facility and operating the telescope in the period 2020-2030. The five partners are: Aarhus University representing Denmark, the University of Turku representing Finland, the University of Oslo representing Norway, the University of Iceland, and Stockholm University. The Management Board, with a member from both AU and UTU approves budgets, accounts, and key decisions, and appoints the director. The NOT Council, with members from all partner institutions, is an advisory body towards the Board and the leadership of the telescope on operational as well as strategic plans. The telescope is a facility exclusively intended for scientific research and education with the aim of studying the Universe from Solar System, stars and exoplanets to galaxies, black holes and other compact objects, cosmology and the Big Bang. The objective of the organization behind NOT is to provide observing time and access to high quality scientific instrumentation for the participating partners primarily in the Nordic countries.
The NOT – from past to futureA project to build a Nordic Telescope was first proposed in 1980 by Profs. Bengt Strömgren and Anders Reiz. A feasibility study by Torben Andersen was completed in July 1981 and this led to forming a Nordic Optical Telescope Committee with the task of presenting a project study. Funding for initial project activities, notably site testing and progress on detailed design, was provided in early 1983 by the Swedish and Danish Natural Science Research Councils. The Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) Scientific Association (NOTSA) was founded in 1984 to construct and operate a 2.56m Nordic telescope for observations at optical and infrared wavelengths from the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Canarias, Spain. After construction and testing, the telescope was inaugurated in 1989, and regular observations started in 1990. Instrumentation upgrades have been part of the strategy since the beginning, and work has been done over the years to streamline the telescope, instrument and data flow operations so as to improve the efficiency, flexibility and reliability of the operations.After operating under the original NOTSA structure for decades, the organisational structure behind the Nordic Optical Telescope was succeeded by the current co-ownership of Aarhus University and the University of Turku in 2019. The Nordic Optical Telescope offers observing time through open peer review calls focused on the Nordic astronomy community, where funding is based. Observing time proposals are ranked by the NOT Observing Programme Committee. The Spanish community is allocated 20% of the nights and another 5% is dedicated to the International Time Program (ITP). External programs are welcome to apply, as well. See Applying for time at NOT. The scientific results based on NOT observations are reflected in the Publications based on NOT Data. NOT offers reliable instrumentation and is specialised in flexible observing modes. Since 2025 NOT offers Rapid-Response-Mode, giving fully automatic and immediate access to the telescope, ready to expose within 150 seconds of a trigger. The number of refereed publications based on NOT data has been around 100 per year over the last 15 years, rising to 148 in 2025. This is highly indicative of the interest the user community has in the telescope. The educational role of NOT is also important, and on-site as well as remote observing schools are organized regularly by universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with typically around 10 nights per semester allocated. External schools are welcome to apply, as well. The NOT Research Student programme, hands-on training of PhD and Master students through a year long stay at NOT, an activity which started already during the first year of NOT operation, has been highly expanded and developed over the years. See the Johannes Andersen Student Programme at the NOT for a description. Development of a new instrument is on-going, and the NOT Transient Explorer (NTE) will offer simultaneous optical and NIR spectroscopy, alternatively: dual-beam visible and infrared imaging. The concept is modelled on the highly successful X-shooter at the ESO Very Large Telecope (VLT). The objective for the AU and UTU, in partnership with other Nordic universities, is to make NOT a powerful tool for the study of a wide range of transient and variable astrophysical sources. A workshop was organized in 2022 in La Palma for the NOT community to come together and discuss instrumentation, science and education, see the e-proceedings of "NOT - a telescope for the future". NOT aims to continue to serve the astronomy community with low technical down-time, high optical quality, optimized queue mode and flexible scheduling, great user support, and hands-on student training. Furthermore, NOT seeks to upgrade observational capabilities and data services, such as archive searches as well as data analysis pipelines.
The NOT Council members |