Optical design of Time Domain Observatory (TIDO)

Abstract

This paper reports optical system of Time Domain Observatory (TIDO) for Nanjing University(NJU). TIDO is a telescope array dedicated to survey of exoplanetary science and astronomical phenomena in the time domain. TIDO consists of 6 robotic telescopes which can image 336 square degrees(SD) of the sky in once observation, outfitted for high-resolution photometry efficiently. TIDO began in 2014 and has been in operation for 4 years. Some preliminary observation has been made, but the full operation will be by the end of 2019. In this paper, we describe the optical system of TIDO, including a 1-meter primary-focus telescope with field of view (FOV) of 9 SD, three 0.3-meter improved Marcostov telescopes with FOV of 64 SD, one 0.18-meter telescopes with FOV of 144 SD, one 0.3 meter RC telescope with FOV of 0.04 SD, and present the results of initial performance simulations using ZEMAX software.