Telescopes
The Observatory has four permanently mounted telescopes on site, and a collection of 12 portable telescopes used both on and off site. Open House events make use of the permanently mounted telescopes profiled below.
8" NASA Refractor
Built in the 1960's and installed in 1970, this telescope is an astrographic camera and was donated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA used it for observing the first man-made satellites put into orbit around Earth. When it became obsolete for their purposes they donated it to our observatory. While here, it has been used for the photographic determination of precise positions of asteroids, observations of comets, and wide field photography. Since the advent of large CCDs, it has become nearly impossible to obtain large astronomical glass photographic plates, so the telescope is currently used for wide-field visual observation of the Moon, the Pleiades, and other large, bright objects.
Diameter of objective lens: 8 inches (203.2 mm)
Focal Length of objective lens: 40 inches (1016 mm)
Focal ratio: f/5