The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope, also known as the Mayall 4-meter Telescope, is a four-meter (158 inches) reflector telescope located at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and named after Nicholas U. Mayall. It saw first light on February 27, 1973, and was the second-largest telescope in the world at that time. Initial observers included David Crawford, Nicholas Mayall, and Arthur Hoag. It was dedicated on June 20, 1973 after Mayall's retirement as director. The mirror has an f/2.7 hyperboloidal shape. It is made from a two-foot (61 cm (24 in)) thick fused quartz disk that is supported in an advanced-design mirror cell. The prime focus has a field of view six times larger than that of the Hale reflector. It is host to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. The identical Víctor M. Blanco Telescope was later built at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, in Chile.
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Mayall 4m telescope in the context of Víctor M. Blanco Telescope
The Víctor M. Blanco Telescope, also known as the Blanco 4m, is a 4-metre aperture telescope located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile on the summit of Mt. Cerro Tololo. Commissioned in 1974 and completed in 1976, the telescope is identical to the Mayall 4m telescope located on Kitt Peak. In 1995 it was dedicated and named in honour of Puerto Rican astronomer Víctor Manuel Blanco.It was the largest optical telescope in the Southern hemisphere from 1976 until 1998, when the first 8-metre telescope of the ESO Very Large Telescope opened.
Currently the main research instrument used at the telescope is the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), the camera used in the Dark Energy Survey. DECam saw its first light in September 2012.