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September 28, 2004

25 candles for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope

The Canada-France-Hawaii telescope (National Research Council of Canada - French National Center for Scientific Research - University of Hawaii) is celebrating a quarter of a century of observations that have been rewarded with many discoveries. In honor of its 25th birthday, the telescope turned its new MegaPrime(1) facility with MegaCam imager - with a total of 340 megapixels - on a large(2) and distant window in the cosmos. Thanks to data processing at the TERAPIX center(3), researchers have obtained one of the best ever ground-based images of this type, even though the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, 3.60 meters in diameter, is considered a "small" telescope by current standards.

On September 28, 1979, the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope (CFHT) was inaugurated on one of the best observation sites in the Northern hemisphere, atop Mauna Kea, a 4,200-meter high volcano on the island of Hawaii (United States). The sixth largest optical telescope in the world, with a diameter of 3.60 meters, the CFHT was the result of a tripartite agreement entered into four years earlier by Canada's National Research Council (CNRC), the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Hawaii.

The vast scientific potential concentrated at the CFHT has led to a series of ground-breaking discoveries over the past 25 years: detection of dark matter by measuring cosmic astigmatism caused by the gravitational lensing effect; discovery of a number of new moons around planets in the solar system and asteroids; the first observation of Titan through the ochre haze of its atmosphere, providing evidence that there was more water on Mars in the past; observation of a stellar storm caused by an extrasolar planet; observation of a planet orbiting one of the two components in a double star; observation of a  quasar through a gravitational lens, etc. These successes owe as much to the scientists who made them and to the close, continued collaboration among the three organizations, begun in 1974.

To remain competitive when new telescopes are bigger and bigger, the CFHT has been equipped with increasingly sophisticated instruments. It is now able to operate a multiple object spectrograph and has an adaptive optics system, which also equip today's very large telescopes. Such telescopes have been designed to take in vast quantities of light but they have a reduced visual field. By contrast, the CFHT was designed from the outset to obtain a very large circular visual field with a diameter of nearly one degree, which is twice the apparent diameter of the full moon in the sky. Thanks to the advances made possible using CCD  over the last two decades, it has become possible to replace the initial photographic plates with these detectors, which are dozens of times more sensitive. As a result, wide-field imaging has become one of the areas of expertise of the CFHT. And with MegaPrime/MegaCam, the telescope has already been fitted with second-generation equipment with probes of 10 million pixels each.

New instruments will soon be enhancing the CFHT further, such as ESPaDOnS, currently in the testing phase. This spectrograph will cover the high-resolution spectrum, also giving information about light polarization. In addition, the WIRCam (Wide field InfraRed Cameraurs) will enrich observations in the infrared domain by MegaPrime/MegaCam.

For more information see :

Canada France Hawaii Telescope

  • Total mass of the telescope: 325 tons
  • Mirror mass: 14 tons
  • Mirror diameter: 3.60 m
  • Mirror thickness: 60 cm
  • Dome diameter: 32 m
  • Total height of the building: 38 m

 

Observation time

Operating budget

University of Hawaii

15%

10%

CNRS

42.5%

45%

CNRC

42.5%

45%

Images

These images are available in high-resolution format from the CNRS photo library (photothèque).

Photothèque contact : Marie-Odile Jacquot – Tel: +33 1 45 07 56 87 
E-mail: jacquot@cnrs-bellevue.fr

CFHT

© 2004 Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation

The Mauna Kea volcano, located on the island of Hawaii in the United States, is one of the best astronomical observation sites in the Northern hemisphere, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope is located in one of the best spots, near the summit of the volcano. The high altitude (4,200m) offers a cleaner, dryer atmosphere that is less agitated above the summit, a darker sky, and more cloud-free nights per year.

CFHTLS Deep Field 1

© 2004 Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation & TERAPIX/IAP

The result of processing by the TERAPIX center of 250 images taken by the MegaPrime/MegaCam of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in a deep region of the sky called "Deep Field 1". This covers an area of 1 degree x 1 degree, i.e., a square in the sky which could hold four full moons. Observing this area should make it possible to study all the supernovae detected in the field and improve our understanding of the evolution of the structure of the Universe by furthering studies carried out with other instruments, such as VLT-VIRMOS, XMM-LSS, GALEX and SIRTF.

This image is the result of dozens of hours of observation and already contains 600,000 visible galaxies. In the years to come, other observations in this zone will bring further information, in the framework of a vast French-Canadian project initiated last year to make observations of the sky, using the telescope for 500 nights over a period of 5 years.

Videos

CFHT Fly-By.

MegaPrime / MegaCam.

CFHT by night.

CFHT Sunset.

Notes:

1) The MegaPrime facility is the result of a collaboration between CFHT, the CNRS, the CEA (Atomic Energy Commission) and Canada's National Research Council (CNRC).
2) The surface of the area under study is one degree by one degree, or approximately four times the surface occupied by the full moon in the sky.
3) TERAPIX (Traitement Elémentaire, Réduction et Analyse des PIXels) is a data processing center based in the Astrophysics Institute of Paris (IAP) with support from CNRS/INSU (National Institute for Sciences of the Universe), the National Cosmology Program, DAPNIA (Department of Astrophysics, Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics and Associated Instrumentation) of the CEA (Atomic Energy Commission), and IAP.
4) CCDs (Charged Coupled Devices) are optical electronic detectors used, for example, in digital cameras.

Contact information:

Christian Veillet, Executive Director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation.
Tel.: 1 (808) 885 7944 - E-mail: veillet@cfht.hawaii.edu

CNRS-INSU contact:
Guillaume Duveau - Tel: +33 1 44 96 43 13 - E-mail: guillaume.duveau@cnrs-dir.fr

CNRS press contact:
Martine Hasler - Tel: +33 1 44 96 46 35 - E-mail: martine.hasler@cnrs-dir.fr

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