El TJK was commissioned more than 30 years ago by United Kingdom, Ireland and The Netherlands. In 2003 the financing of the Isaac Newton Group ended, and in 2012 it become part of the Astrophysics Institute of Canarias (IAC).
With the arrival of the new owners and the international agreement of the IAC with SARA- the University Consortium that operates telescopes and astronomical instruments by remote control in Arizona and Chile-, the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope has been reinvented into a new educational facet, looking for asteroids and quasarts, facilitating the participation of students that now can observe the skies from their classrooms.
The Jacobus Japteyn Telescope has the most complete telescope battery of the world. This telescope gather the best conditions for astronomic research and is attracting the new generation of Cherenkov Telescopes for the investigation of gamma rays of high energy.
The telescope has an extention of 198.000 hectare and an altitud of 2396.000 meters, it counts with a primary mirror of 4,2 meters and is the biggest telescope of its class of all Europe. It’s versatility and advance instrumentation, with it’s quality of sky of Roque de Los Muchachos, has made it one of the most scientific productive telescopes of the world.
