The 14” is a Celestron C-14 OTA on a Paramount ME German equatorial mount, and was was assembled by Adam Smith (shown pictured), for his thesis (PDF) project. It is equipped with an Apogee (Andor), Alta U47 with a 10242 13 x 13-micron pixel E2V CCD, also with high-cooling. Like the 32” and 18”, it has a DFM FW-82 filter wheel that has 8 positions with 2” filters, Johnson-Cousins U, B, V, RC, IC, Luminance, clear, park (plug). MaxIm DL controls the camera and filter wheel, Software Bisques’ program, The Sky, controls the telescope.
This telescope is primarily used on the Skynet robotic telescope network, with queue-scheduled observations that are interrupted, infrequently, by response to GRB or LIGO event alerts. It may also be used remotely without Skynet and may be used in situ.
This project was jointly funded by ASU, North Carolina Space Grant and the National Science Foundation's Major Research Intrumentation Program.
Photo by D. Caton