Mare Crisium

[PhotoGav]

Here is a close up of Mare Crisium. Taken with a 10" Thomas Cooke refractor, made in 1860, and a Chameleon3 camera, made in 2017!

[cuivenion]

Hi, great image. Love that its been taken with such a scope. Could you provide a little more info on the scope please? I presume its mounted in an observatory somewhere.

[PhotoGav]

7 minutes ago, cuivenion said:

Hi, great image. Love that its been taken with such a scope. Could you provide a little more info on the scope please? I presume its mounted in an observatory somewhere.

Thank you!

It is indeed a pretty special telescope. It is housed in the Blackett Observatory at Marlborough College. I am lucky enough to have access to it and am starting to try out some imaging with it. It has a focal length of 3.8m and focal ratio of f15. It is a bit of a pig to use and the motor drive is not the steadiest ever made! It was primarly made to split double stars, which it does particularly effectively. It is also great for Solar System objects. Deep sky objects are faint in it, but clusters are good.

The telescope moved to the College in 1935 from Oxford University, where it had been installed in the Radcliffe Observatory, having been donated to the University by an amateur astronomer, Joseph Barclay, who purchased the scope new for his own personal use. It is the largest telescope in Wiltshire and the oldest telescope to have computer go-to, in the world! It underwent a large restoration programme about 15 years ago and is used regularly by the students at the College who are studying for GCSE Astronomy and by 'The Friends Of The Marlborough Telescope', who hold all sorts of observing nights and events. Here's a picture of me (right) and my colleague, Jonathan Genton (ex Head of Science at Marlborough College), in the observatory:

[cuivenion]

Great stuff, thanks.