The Liverpool Telescope (LT) is now offline for some routine maintenance and to undertake a few system upgrades. One of the major tasks will be to re-aluminise the LT's 2 metre mirror; a task that needs to be done every couple of years and will improve the amount of light that the telescope can collect. It's the aluminium coating on the back of the glass mirror that makes it reflective.

Another major task is to install a new spectrograph called FRODOSPEC. This instrument will allow users to look at the spectrum of a star, which is a bit like looking at its finger-print, and can tell us what sort of chemicals are in the star's atmosphere.

Why not keep an eye on the LT upgrade using the live webcam.

Unfortunately, these upgrades mean that the LT will be offline from 5th September 2007 for around 10 days. During this time, NSO observers and professional astronomers will be unable to obtain images of the night sky. However, you can still use Go Observing to order images, but they will not be taken until the LT is back up and running. In the meantime, you could always look at observations in the LT archive, which contains hundreds of images taken by other schools in the past, or even use one of the Image of the Month observations.