Turkey's next big science project: DAG the 4 meter telescope

Abstract

The DAG (Turkish for Eastern Anatolia Observatory) 4-m telescope project has been formally launched in 2012, being fully funded by the Government of Turkey. This new observatory is to be located on a 3170 m altitude ridge near the town of Erzurum in Eastern Anatolia. First light is scheduled for late 2017. The DAG team's baseline design of the telescope consists of a Ritchey-Chretien type with alt-az mount, a focal length of 56 m and a field of view up to 30 arcmin. Multiple instruments will be located at the Nasmyth foci. The optical specifications of the telescope are set by DAG team for diffraction limited performance with active and adaptive optics. Modern mirror control technologies will allow defining in a most cost effective way the figuring requirements of the optical surfaces: the low order figuring errors of the combined optical train constituted of M1-M2-M3 are defined in terms of Zernike coefficients and referred to the M1 surface area. The high order figuring errors are defined using the phase structure functions. Daytime chilling of the closed enclosure volume and natural ventilation through suitable openings during observations will be used to ensure optimal mirror and dome seeing. A design of a ground layer adaptive optics (GLAO) subsystem is developed concurrently with the telescope. In this paper, main design aspects, the optical design and expected performance analysis of the telescope will be presented.