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An Overview of The Bradstreet Observatory
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The workhorses of the Bradstreet Observatory are the two
twin 16" diameter Meade LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes, housed
in 15' Ash Domes. These are
controlled via two Dell OptiPlex GX1p computers in the Russell
Control Room. These computers run Software Bisque's telescope
control package called The Sky that allow us to point
the telescope at over 526,000,000 astronomical objects! |
| Our other instrumentation consists of two SBIG CCD cameras
(ST-10XME) which we use for both astrophotography
and research. We also have an Optec SSP-7 photometer and
Optomechanics Research 10C spectrograph for use. A Daystar H-alpha solar filter and Thousand Oaks visual
light solar filter have expanded the observatory's functionality to
daytime observing. |
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The key to the observatory's design is flexibility. We
also have two 8" Celestron 8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes (the
original observatory workhorses) and a 150mm (6") Orion Argonaut
Maksutov that we can piggy-back on the LX200 for solar
observing or astrophotography. Our resources also include a slew of
adapters, filters, video cameras, and eye pieces that are integrated with
our equipment setups. |
| Various computer software programs are integral to the
functionality of the observatory. We primarily use Cyanogen
Production's MaxIm DL image processing software, CCDSoft, and Adobe
Photoshop to handle photography. CCD photometry data is processed
using both Axiom Research's MIRA software and the NOAO IRAF packages on a
Red Hat Linux workstation. Student computer labs are equipped with
CCDSoft and The Sky software for doing class work. |
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