Study of the yoke for a 10m class telescope

The yoke of an alt-az telescope should provide a stiff interface between the azimuth journal and the tube of the telescope. The stiffness of the yoke affects the performance of the telescope servosystem and its mass has an important contribution on the total weight of the telescope. Based on the design of the yoke of the GTC 10m telescope, a new configuration is analyzed in order to take advantage of the azimuth journal to increase the stiffness and reduce the weight of the yoke. The performance of this configuration is compared to that of the yoke of GTC.