Monday, April 28, 2014

The Club's new telescope

A long time ago (no one seems willing to admit, or remember, how long) there was a proposal to allow the ATM group  (amateur telescope making group) group to rebuild the club’s Coulter telescope. This telescope was a large Dob sitting in the observatory building, unused.

The idea: rebuild the telescope so it would be more usable. The mirrors would be used in a newly constructed telescope. The proposal passed, but progress was slow. That is until the autumn months of 2013, when a Telekit was ordered. The ATM group started meeting once a week, to assemble the kit. There were many tasks that needed to be coordinated among the group, such as sending the mirror to be recoated. It took time, but there was steady progress.

The most recent of the ATM meetings was last Saturday. While there were some mirror issues that remain (not to mention the possible addition of electronics, which would be yet another project), the end result was a usable telescope.

The telescope was brought to the Saturday open house. It was performing well, and Lowbrows as well as club visitors had the chance to look through it. There were some photographs taken at the open house and I plan to post some of them later this week.

For information about open houses at Peach Mountain (located a few miles from Dexter, Michigan) see http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/calendar/regular.html

For a schedule of astronomy events in Southeast Michigan (including open houses at Peach Mountain) see http://www.umich.edu/~lowbrows/calendar/

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