18-Inch Telescope

18 inch telescope

The 18” telescope is a former ground-based satellite tracking optical tube assembly (OTA), now mounted on a German equatorial mount, and is controlled by the same DFM Engineering telescope control system as the 32”. The telescope’s control system may also be controlled with Software Bisques’ program, The Sky.

Instrumentation

18 inch telescope instrumentation

The 18-inch telescope is currently equipped for imaging, with a Finger Lakes Instruments CCD camera with an 20482 E2V CCD. It has the thermoelectric high-cooling option that can cool it to -30 to -60o C, depending on the ambient temperature. It also has a DFM FW-82 filter wheel with 8 positions, with 2” filters, Johnson-Cousins U, B, V, RC, IC, Luminance, clear, park (plug). Like the 32”, the camera and filter wheel are controlled with MaxIm DL.

Curretly used primarily for eclipsing binary research, it does < 1% differential photometry with exposures of <10 to ~60 seconds (depending on filter), down to about 13th magnitude.