Please choose one of the links below to see images & details on some of our superb equipment.
With regard to Equipment, we have been very impoverished in having only the 18" in Nasmith mode and a slide projector from 1983 till 1998 ish when we decided to start seeking funding for other pieces of equipment. We have been fairly successful too and have accumulated quite a respectable collection of first class kit. We have had to build a large set of steel cabinets to hold it all and now they are full!
The main 'scope as now been replaced with a Meade 14'' LX200 as of June 2005
Our kit cupboard now houses a Meade 10" LX200 on an Altaz mount, externally funded. It has a set of balance weights and white light solar filters too. Like most groups we have eyepieces in barrel sizes, so our 1.25" eyepieces work for the 18" and the Meade.
The Meade, being portable is used at dark sites (our observatory site is getting progressively more light polluted), and for school and community visits. It is also used for CCD imaging on our concrete pad behind the observatory. For this work it has a Meade f6.3 focal reducer, a Celestron coma reducer and an extra camera support for film cameras.
The CCD camera is a Starlight Xpress MX5C with a flip mirror for centralising the image and to help focussing. The chip, onto which we must get the image is about 3mm x 4mm, so it’s easy to miss. Both externally funded. The camera is controlled by the same laptop computer that we use to control the Digital Setting Circles on the 18". This means we can’t do both at the same time.
We have an AE 10" Cassegrain donated to us by Dr Robin Jakeways of Leeds University. It is an extremely sturdy instrument with cast iron mount and steel Dec housing. The tube is skeletal with aluminium tubes in cast aluminium rings. We have not been able to make much use of it yet as it really needs a permanent position. Our plan is to mount it on a pier in a roll off roof extension to the observatory we are planning to build.
It has a very good primary and can be used in classical Cassegrain and Newtonian modes. Both axes have synchronous motor drives. It takes .956" eyepieces and has 3 and a barlow and star diagonal. It can also use the Meade f6.3 focal reducer and the Celestron coma reducer.
We have another donated instrument, a 4" Newtonian Orion reflector with synchronous motor drives on both axes. It takes .956" eyepieces so shares with the AE 10". It is much more portable though and sits on its own aluminium pier with legs for stability. It was donated by a stranger who bought it then lost interest in astronomy.
We have an old 4" Newtonian reflector of unknown origin on an altaz mount, rarely used and an old 3" Frank refractor on an equatorial mount with manual slow motions. It has been used on the 18" as a guide telescope and as a solar instrument but balancing was always a problem so it was relegated to the cabinet.
We also possess a 10" primary that one of our members has used to make into a Dobsonian. He has fitted it with encoders so can find his way around the sky more easily.
A very recent acquisition, October 2001, externally funded, was a Coranado 0.6Angstrom Hydrogen alpha filter coupled to a Televue 102 refractor on a Vixen mount with Goto facilities. This piece of equipment was the first in amateur hands in this country. It will be used for school and community visits instead of the Meade. It will also be used for CCD work on the sun and stars.
Another piece of external funding is the Astrovid 2000. A very sensitive video camera that fits into the eyepiece holder of the 18", and is used for the sun, moon and planets. Its purpose originally was to transfer real time images from the 18" down to the large TV set in the meeting room below, so people who cannot climb the stairs into the dome can see what the 18" sees. It has a small TV set in the dome to help centralise the image and to focus (otherwise we’d be shouting up and down with instructions). It has a control box to allow us to vary the gain, shutter speed and gamma. We can record images onto tape with a VCR too, so it is ideal for occultations etc. Our favourite use for it though is to take the tape, connect the VCR to a PC through a "Frame Grabber" and step it through. A revelation as you watch the seeing change from frame to frame. We choose and save the best frames, then stack them with software and produce images on other software. Some very good images are possible this way. Though we have the sophistocated controls of the Astrovid 2000, some members are doing similar work with CCTV surveillance cameras, which don’t have shutter speed controls etc. Technology is moving really fast in this field.
Brian Joynes