26-inch Instrumentation: Tailpiece Upgrade
The 26-inch has been equipped with a new tailpiece capable of mounting a
Santa Barbara Instruments CCD camera, either
an ST-8 and ST-1001E, and Astrovid 2000 high speed camera, and a
standard 2 inch eyepiece.
With financial assistance from the Commonwealth of Virginia, the
McCormick family, and a National Science Foundation grant to Steven
Majewski, the historic 26-inch Alvan Clark refractor at
Leander McCormick Observatory has been upgraded to a state-of-the-art
teaching facility for both graduate and undergraduate students. The
telescope has been fitted with sensitive CCD cameras, allowing digital
pictures to be captured from the telescope focal plane and stored for
computer analysis. These new cameras are more than 50 times more
sensitive than the old photographic camera, which is still available
and useful for taking pictures over larger areas.
The imaging camera has been designed to operate in parallel with
eyepiece viewing through the telescope, as well as the Astrovid
camera. In this way, students may compare naked-eye views of
celestial objects to those captured by the electronic camera. Both
the eyepiece and camera will be operational for the popular McCormick
Public Nights.
Even though the computer images are generally more detailed and show
fainter structures than can be seen with the naked eye, there is still
a romantic thrill people experience when given the opportunity to look
directly through a large telescope. The new parallel mode of
operating the 26-inch provides the flexibility for McCormick
visitors to have both experiences.
The tailpiece has been available for use with classes since the Fall
of 2002. For additional Information please e-mail Peter Frinchaboy:
pmf8b@virginia.edu.
|
