Facilities and Equipment
Facilities
The Astronomy Club benefits from the use of University facilities
for its two primary observing sites. Information about these sites
is listed below.
University of Illinois Observatory
Dark Sky Observing Sites Near UIUC
Equipment
The club owns and has access to a number of telescopes, eyepieces,
cameras, and miscellanous other astronomical equipment. Some of
the main items of interest are listed below.
Portable Telescopes
- 8" Celestron C8 with 1.25" focuser.
This scope is owned by Astro dept.
It has no tripod but it can be mounted on the
concrete filled barrel-pier behind the observatory.
- 10" sonotube Dobsonian with 2" focuser.
Mount and tube hardware were refurbished in August 2002.
- 10" sonotube Dobsonian with 1.25" focuser.
Mount and tube hardware were refurbished in August 2002.
- 12.5" truss tube Dobsonian with 2" focuser.
The primary mirror was refigured and recoated in early 2004.
The mount was subsequently rebuilt and reassembled in April 2004.
Non-Portable Telescopes
Eyepieces, Filters, Etc
Cameras
- The Astro dept. owns an Olympus OM-1 which can be attached
to a wide variety of telescopes at prime focus for film-based
astrophotography. This camera has mirror lock and a cable release
for vibration free exposures. Black and white film and print processing
can be done in the observatory darkroom if you're trained to use the
equipment.
- The club owns two Philips webcams which can be attached to most scopes
in place of the regular eyepiece, for imaging of bright objects such
as the moon, planets, etc. We intend to modify one of these cameras for
long exposure use eventually.
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