Facilities

The Shief dome houses the second Celestron C-14 with a SBIG STL 1001E CCD mounted on a Paramount ME. The Shief dome sits just east of the original Etscorn building. The combination of the 14-inch F/11 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with the SBIG 1001E CCD gives a plate scale of 1.25 arc seconds/pixel with a field of view of ~21.3 arc minutes. The internal 5 position filter in the STL1001E houses a B, V, R, I and clear filter set.

The control room for the roll-off roof enclosure actually houses two control computers. One for each of the Celestron C-14s. In this image the computer and two monitors on right side of the image control roll-off roof C-14   The computer and the two monitors on the left side of the image control the Shief C-14. The electronics rack in the middle holds the ever necessary radio for late night enjoyment. It also has the web cam monitor that shows the position of the telescope with respect to the Shief’s shutter. In both systems the monitor on the left side is displaying Software Bisque’s TheSky6 which controls the telescope pointing and tracking. The monitor on the right side has Software Bisque’s CCDSoft V5 which controls the taking and saving of our CCD imagery.

The original Etscorn building has a  roll-off roof that houses a Celestron C-14 with a SBIG STL 1001E CCD mounted on a Software Bisque Paramount ME. This C-14 has been around for awhile, it is serial number 121!With the roll-ff roof we do not have to worry about dome shutter tracking the telescope. This allows for long stretches of unattended observing.The combination of the 14-inch F/11 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with the SBIG 1001E CCD gives a plate scale of 1.25 arc-seconds/pixel with a field of view of ~21.3 arc-minutes. The internal 5 position filter in the STL1001E houses a B, V, R, I and clear filter set. This original Etscorn Campus Observatory building  houses the roll-off roof, a control room, a battery backup system and storage area.

The TAK control center is located in the central portion of the NCLB building. The computer system is the same as those in the Etscorn Control center, a computer and two monitors running Software Bisque’s TheSKy V6 and CCDsoft V5. The CCD attached to the TAK is a SBIG  ST10XME. We also have a SIBG high resolution spectograph that can be use on either the TAK or either of the C-14s.

 The FS152 Tak is  housed in the large dome that can be seen in the “looking south” image.  It is a 6-inch APO refractor of the highest optical quality. Combined with the SIBG ST10XME CCD and the Software Bisque Paramount ME mount, it gives excellent image quality with 1.15 arcsecond pixels and a field of view of  42 by 28 arc minutes. There is an integrated CFW8A filter wheel that has V,B,R,I and clear filters allowing scientific multi color imagery. We also have second filter wheel that has R, G, B, H alpha and clear filters for doing color astrophotgraphy.