First thing this morning I made a visit to the New Forest Observatory (NFO) which is operated my Prof. Greg Parker. This was for a Party being held there to celebrate the first light of the new mini-wasp observatory setup. This is quite an impressive piece of equipment which comprises of a Paramount ME mounted upon a Bespoke Aluminium pier which is bolted rather well to a massive Concrete block sunk into the ground. All of this is housed within a new Pulsar Observatory which has 2 side pods for additional storage and computer equipment which is required to control everything. At the business end of the Mount are 2 Takahashi Sky 90’s which are used for the imaging along with a guide scope plus an additional refractor which can be seen that has an eyepiece.
The Dome as it comes has no way of automatically rotating the Dome to the correct position for imaging, this led Tom from Curdridge Observatory design and build an automated dome controller which parts of can be seen in my previous post.
There are still a few odds and ends that need to be done to finish the observatory, some simple and some not so simple however I am sure these will not be a challenge to Greg, Tom and Myself
.
I am sure that in no time at all Greg is going to be producing some amazing images from this fantastic setup.
