Telescope Beam Simulator

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The development of new instruments (such as cameras which take images, spectrographs which analyse compositions and motions, and polarimeters which measure magnetic fields) for astronomical telescopes is an ongoing effort. New technologies promise greater sensitivities or resolutions and often lower costs. At LJMU we own and operate the world's largest robotic telescope ("The Liverpool Telescope") which is sited on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma. To keep the telescope scientifically competitive, we must continually upgrade and replace its instruments to take advantage of new technologies. We also build instrumentation for other telescopes around the world who have similar goals.Currently we use sophisticated ray-tracing software to predict how well our instruments will work when we transport them out to the telescope. However this software can not predict the performance of commercial off the shelf components, which, while having the great advantage of low cost, often have proprietary designs. We therefore wish to buy a "telescope beam simulator" than will project a simulated image of the sky onto our new instruments in the laboratory before shipping them overseas. This will allow us to test our instruments as we go along, improving their quality and saving time on overseas trips, meaning the telescope can be used more for science and less for engineering work. We will also be able to place the simulator into a test chamber where we can alter the temperature and so check that the instrument will work as well on a cold winters night as it does in the room temperature of the laboratory where it was built.