Over the past several years we have been evaluating the performance of the 0.9-m telescope. The causes for this rather inferior performance include faulty mirror supports, inherent optical limitations, poor guiding implementation, and inadequate thermal control over the telescope, dome, and building. To talk about something which has been done, a shortened guider box was installed in July on the 0.9-m. Tests over the past 1.5 years with a Hartmann screen had indicated that significant spherical aberration existed, and that the minimum spherical focal plane was 96 mm above the nominal detector position. Jorge Briones and Oscar Saa fabricated a new guider box and TV guider mount.
Tests show that the system seems rigid and reliable, so it is in routine use.
This is, of course, one of the first scientific telescopes put into service on Tololo. I would dearly love to improve it to the point where it routinely produces the subarcsecond images that we know the site delivers. Many of the scientific programs could derive significant benefits from such an improved performance.