It is operated by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Leuven University), Belgium, in collaboration with the Observatory of the University of Geneva and named after Gerard Mercator, famous cartographer.

The telescope was completed in the year 2000 for an exoplanet research program.

This camera has a size of 2k by 6k pixels Frame Transfer detector originally designed for ESA's canceled Eddington space mission.

The second instrument on the Mercator Telescope is the HERMES echelle spectrograph.

The Swiss Euler 1.2m Telescope and the Mercator Telescope were part of the Southern Sky extrasolar Planet search Programme which has discovered numerous extrasolar planets.