CCD Observations of Gravitational Lenses and Extragalactic Supernovae with the Brorfelde Schmidt Telescope

Abstract

Abstract. The Brorfelde Schmidt telescope has been modified to use a 1024 X 1024 12 micron pixels CCD camera. The field is 27 X 27 arcmin. When required, the spatial sampling is improved by co-adding multiple exposures with small offsets. The telescope is operated in service mode, with one observer carrying out several different observing programmes in parallel. The telescope is particularly well suited for long term monitoring programmes, most notably photometric monitoring of gravitationally lensed QSOs and searches for extragalactic supernovae.

Brorfelde Schmidt CCD Catalog

“…Since 1999, the telescope has been equipped with a 2048x2048 thick, front side illuminated Kodak KAF-4201 CCD, which is cooled by a threestage Peltier element, which again is water cooled (Florentin-Nielsen & Jørgensen 1995). The pixel size of 9 microns yields a scale of 1.24 arcsec/pixel and a field size of 42x42 arcmin.…”

“…The Brorfelde Schmidt telescope (Andersen & Clausen 1974) was used with a 2k by 2k charge-coupled device (CCD) camera (Florentin-Nielsen & Jørgensen 1995) to observe the sky from +49.6 • to +90 • declination, with additional observations taken in selected fields north of −10 • . The main idea of the project was to supplement the Carlsberg Meridian Circle Catalog (CMC14) (1), which covers the −30 • to +50 • declination area.…”