Isaac Newton Telescope
The Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) is a 2.54m telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma.
During the second year of my PhD I worked at the INT as a support astronomer as part of the Isaac Newton Group Studentship programme.
Instruments
Whilst I worked with the INT, it was equipped with two main instruments; the Wide Field Camera (WFC) and the Intermediate Dispersion Spectrograph (IDS).
WFC was a wide-field imaging camera, with a field of view of 0.3 square degrees. It used 4 CCDs, each with a 2154x4200 array of 13.5 micron pixels. Mounted at the prime focus of the INT, with a focal ratio of f/3.3, gave WFC a plate scale of 0.33 arcseconds per pixel.
IDS was a medium resolution spectrograph with a wide range of interchangeable gratings. It was mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the INT and could also accept either a red-optimised or blue-optimised camera. IDS was used for a wide range of science, from stellar spectroscopy to galaxy redshift surveys. My work with IDS was primarily with its lowest resolution mode to classify newly discovered supernovae (see GOTO-FAST).