Back to album

82-inch Otto Struve telescope & friends

Our all-nighters on Leonids weekend at McDonald Observatory in West Texas, Nov. 17/18, 2006. Byron Ross at left, Josh Walawender of U. Hawaii in white shirt, Steve Henderson to Josh's right, and I'm sorry I can't identify the person on the right positively.

 

This is the business end of the Otto Struve 82" cassegrain telescope, the original Big Gun at McDonald, built by Warner & Swasey in the 1930s. We had this to ourselves for about 3 full hours before sunrise on Nov. 18. All I can add is "Holy Smoke!"

 

This is a cropped 3-frame panorama by Autostitch. I think the original exposures were about 1/4 second each at f3.5 with the Pentax istDS.

1,024 views
1 fave
3 comments
Uploaded on November 20, 2006
Taken on November 20, 2006