Lijiang 2.4-meter Telescope and its instruments

The Lijiang 2.4-meter Telescope(LJT), the largest common-purpose optical telescope in China,has been available to the worldwide astronomical community since 2008. It is located at the Gaomeigu site,Lijiang Observatory(LJO), in the southwest of China. The site has very good observational conditions.During its 10-year operation, several instruments have been equipped on the LJT. Astronomers can perform both photometric and spectral observations. The main scientific goals of LJT include recording photometric and spectral evolution of supernovae, reverberation mapping of active galactic nuclei, investigating the physical properties of binary stars and near-earth objects(comets and asteroids), and identification of exoplanets and all kinds of transients. Until now, the masses of 41 high accretion rate black holes have been measured, and more than 168 supernovae have been identified by the LJT. More than 190 papers related to the LJT have been published. In this paper, the general observation conditions of the Gaomeigu site is introduced at first. Then, the structure of the LJT is described in detail, including the optical, mechanical, motion and control system. The specification of all the instruments and some detailed parameters of the YFOSC is also presented. Finally, some important scientific results and future expectations are summarized.

Astronomical Site Monitoring System at Lijiang Observatory

We installed two sets of Astronomical Site Monitoring Systems(ASMSs)at Lijiang Observatory(GMG),for the running of the 2.4-meter Lijiang optical telescope(LJT)and the 1.6-meter Multi-channel Photometric Survey Telescope(Mephisto).The Mephisto is under construction.The ASMS has been running on robotic mode since 2017.The core instruments:Cloud Sensor,All-Sky Camera and AutonomousDIMM that are developed by our group,together with the commercial Meteorological Station and Sky Quality Meter,are combined into the astronomical optical site monitoring system.The new Cloud Sensor's Cloud-Clear Relationship is presented for the first time,which is used to calculate the All-Sky cloud cover.We designed the Autonomous-DIMM located on a tower,with the same height as LJT.The seeing data have been observed for a full year.ASMS's data for the year 2019 are also analysed in detail,which are valuable to observers.

The Coude Echelle Spectrograph for the Lijiang 1.8 m telescope

The Coude Echelle Spectrograph(CES)was originally mounted on Xinglong 2.16 m telescope in 1994.When the High Resolution Fiber-fed Spectrograph(HRS)was commissioned at Xinglong 2.16 m telescope,the red path of CES was moved to Lijiang 1.8 m telescope,following some redesign and reinstallation.The CES of Lijiang 1.8 m telescope has the spectral resolution(R=λ/?λ)ranging from 20000 to 50000 corresponding to different slit widths.With a 2 k×2 k PI CCD,CES has a wavelength coverage between 570 nm to 1030 nm.In particular,the resolution of 37000 at 0.5 mm slit corresponds to 1.3′′on the sky.The limiting magnitude is V=11.5 with the use of the tip-tilt feedback system,and the S/N is about 40 for 1 hour exposure at 600 nm(R=37000).During the installation of CES,the tip-tilt mirror technology had successfully fulfilled high precision guiding and tracking for high resolution spectral observation and significantly improved the observation efficiency.