chipdatajeffb
Otto Struve telescope
Saturday night before we started observing we were allowed to use flash in the dome. It was deepening dusk outdoors. This thing weighs 41 tons, about 20 of which make up the counterweight at upper left. It is so heavy (and so old!) that it sags under its own weight and even the concrete supports change position as it slews to different points in the sky. Modern computer models are used to determine the required offset from catalog positions of objects in the sky. None of the almost 100 objects we viewed over two nights failed to appear in the center of the field of view at more than 800X on first pointing by the operator. Pretty impressive. The max power we used was on Einstein's cross, at 1,783X. Again, impressive. (drool!)
Otto Struve telescope
Saturday night before we started observing we were allowed to use flash in the dome. It was deepening dusk outdoors. This thing weighs 41 tons, about 20 of which make up the counterweight at upper left. It is so heavy (and so old!) that it sags under its own weight and even the concrete supports change position as it slews to different points in the sky. Modern computer models are used to determine the required offset from catalog positions of objects in the sky. None of the almost 100 objects we viewed over two nights failed to appear in the center of the field of view at more than 800X on first pointing by the operator. Pretty impressive. The max power we used was on Einstein's cross, at 1,783X. Again, impressive. (drool!)