The Calar Alto Observatory - present and future instrumentation

The Calar Alto Observatory, located at 2168 m altitude in the Sierra de los Filabres in southern Spanish province of Andalucia, was founded in the early 1970s in order to provide astronomers in Germany and in Spain with modern observational facilities in the northern hemisphere. This role is not going to change over the next decade as 2-4 m telescopes are still essential and more efficient than 8 m telescopes, for wide-field and surface-brightness limited surveys, for support of surveys at other wavelengths (X-ray, radio), for regular monitoring work, for pursuing innovative ideas, for obtaining accurate astrometry and photometry of reference objects and unknowns, etc. In order to pursue these challenges, state of the art instrumentation is required. In the following, the existing facilities on Calar Alto are summarised. and future instrumentation projects are briefly discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.