The New Robotic Telescope is designed to conduct rapid target follow-up within 30 seconds of an `alert' from survey facilities. To achieve this will require a quick settling time requirement for the mount structure and the mirrors. This means the structure shall be designed to be sufficiently rigid to achieve the mirror position within the `settle

The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) will be the largest fully robotic telescope in the world (4-m class). The primary mirror (M1) will be comprised of 18 independent 960 mm hexagonal segments with an actively controlled position to maintain the shape of the optical surface. The secondary mirror (M2) will be a lightweighted circular mirror of 1270 mm of

The Sun provides a standard reference against which we compare the chemical abundances found anywhere else in the Universe. Nevertheless, there is not a unique `solar' composition, since the chemical abundances found in the solar interior, the photosphere, the upper atmosphere, or the solar wind, are not exactly the same. The composition of the

We present an on-going project consisting of analysis of a sample of twenty-five metal-poor stars, most of them carbon-enriched and thus tagged carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars, observed with the high-resolution HERMES spectrograph mounted on the Mercator telescope (La Palma), the UVES spectrograph on VLT (ESO Chile), or the HIRES

Context. The detection and characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is currently one of the main drivers pushing the development of new observing facilities. In this context, high-resolution spectrographs are proving their potential and showing that high-resolution spectroscopy will be paramount in this field. Aims: We aim to make use of ESPRESSO

Additive Manufacturing (AM; 3D printing) for mirror fabrication allows for intricate designs that can combine lightweight structures and integrated mounting. Conventional lightweight structures utilise cubic or prismatic unit cells, which do not provide uniform support at the edge of curved mirrors. We present a new circular lattice based upon