In typical nightly use, the wide field and planetary telescope and cameras recorded images of favorably placed objects in the sky, including constellations, bright variable stars, nebulae through narrow-band filters, comets, the Moon, and planets. An archive of best images from them and other instruments is maintained on-line.
The Takahashi Mewlon 300 is a 0.3-meter (~12-inch) f/12 Dall-Kirkham and an Allied Video Technology (AVT) Prosilica high speed video color camera recorded images of planets and other bright objects with sub-arcsecond resolution. Its long focal length yielded diffraction-limited lucky imaging when seeing permited.
The Takahashi FSQ-106ED apochromatic f/5 telescope and Apogee U9000 CCD camera provided quantitative science images over a 4° field of stars at least as faint as 18th magnitude, in exposure times up to 100 seconds each that could digitally accumulate for many hours. Filters for photometry, color imaging, and selecting emission from hydrogen or other gases were available. Through the red hydrogen Hα filter, for example, faint nebulae in Milky Way stand out even in our light polluted skies, and the FSQ's wide flat field produced many data sets that are in our archive now. A similar telescope is available for remote use from our facility in Australia.
These telescopes were mounted on a modified Paramount redesigned to be driven by a Galil Motion Controls motor controller and XmTel software. This optical system was retired from routine use in 2019 when a TEC apochromatic refractor was installed in the Star Dome. The Galil controller became the prototype for a new electronics system for the Azari telescope.
All of the images, processed data, software, and instructional materials developed at Shared Skies observatories are offered free for non-commercial use with Creative Commons or GPL licenses after a short proprietary period. These and other Shared Skies telescopes are available for use by students at the University of Louisville and the University of Southern Queensland, and by teachers and students in middle and high schools mentored by faculty at the universities. To arrange to use the telescopes live, or for robotic observations and access to archival data, please contact us by email to kielkopf at louisville dot edu.
