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.