LBT Italia: Current Achievements and Future Directions

TL;DR

This paper reviews the achievements and future plans of the Large Binocular Telescope, highlighting Italian contributions, operational performance, scientific impact, and international competitiveness from 2014 to 2025.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive update on LBT's instruments, usage statistics, and scientific output, emphasizing Italian involvement and future directions.

Findings

Average of 14 publications per year from 2014 to 2025

Approximately 2.2 nights of telescope time per publication

Assessment of LBT's international competitiveness

Abstract

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is a world-leading astronomical observatory, where the italian partnership has played an important role in increasing the telescope's productivity, both through an optimized observing strategy and through peer-reviewed publications that are well recognized by the international astronomical community. This manuscript provides an updated overview of the active and past instruments at LBT, together with the key usage statistics. In particular, we analyze the operational performance recorded in the LBT Italia night logs during INAF's observing time and assess the scientific impact of each instrument. Between 2014 and 2025 LBT Italia produced an average of 14 referred publication per year, based on an annual average of 311 hours of on-sky time. This corresponds to approximately 2.2 nights of telescope time per publication. The results of this analysis are placed in an international context to evaluate the competitiveness of LBT, and we outline future perspective for scientific exploitation.