Save the Espin Telescope

[Caroline Sinden Fuller]

12 hours ago, Xilman said:

Not like Cambridge. Both the Northumberland and Thorrowgood telescopes are still in frequent use, despite the latter now being 160 years old.  The Northumberland is not far short of its bicentennial in 2033.

An opportunity for naming and shaming perhaps? Or would that be counter-productive?

Sadly telescope is completely unusable, the dome vandalised and half the stuff gone ( secondary mirror for example). The place is now an exceeding posh golf club and the owners have no interest in the scope or domes. There have been many attempts over the years to try and do something about the situation. However the main problem being the constant refusal of the owner to deal with the issue. I had a conversation with the ( I think manager) last year & he more or less said that the scope was theirs and if they wanted to just basically forget about it, then so be it.

So hence my approach of trying to use the strength of public opinion against them. Presumably they won’t want any bad publicity- so with hopefully a big ( hopefully world wide spread petition) will apply enough pressure for them to release the telescope.

However- I think at the moment, if we shame them too much - then an easy way out for them is to take an angle grinder to the scope & present it to the local scrap man.

So, the petition is the ‘stick’ and I am hoping that we can get some good publicity as the ‘carrot’ 

So, at the moment what would be an absolute massive help is to get the petition circulated round the world if at all possible. I would be very grateful if people could do that. 
 

[Ags]

An exclusive golf course? My annoyance only increases!

Edited September 18 by Ags

[Caroline Sinden Fuller]

11 hours ago, Ags said:

An exclusive golf course? My annoyance only increases!

Me too! As far as I can see money isn’t something they lack. 

[Caroline Sinden Fuller]

I don’t know if people would be willing to do this - we have wondered about asking people to write us some general supporting letters?

We would need them to be ‘nice’ to avoid upsetting the golf club.
Along the lines of ‘how wonderful it would be to have this historic telescope removed from the current location and put somewhere, restored & back in use’

Is that something that people would be willing to do? 
 

 

[JTEC]

Signed.  Where exactly is the telescope, please?

[Ags]

I will write a letter.

[Caroline Sinden Fuller]

1 hour ago, JTEC said:

Signed.  Where exactly is the telescope, please?

I don’t want to give out the exact address - However the telescope is in south Northumberland. Not far from a village called Heddon on the Wall. About half an hour from Newcastle Upon Tyne. 

[Caroline Sinden Fuller]

1 hour ago, Ags said:

I will write a letter.

Thank you!! Would you be able to send me as a message on here? I can then print it off. Thank you so much 

[JTEC]

Thanks @Caroline Sinden Fuller and understood 🙂

[Mircea]

The list of red stars of Espin is available in the edition revised by him of the ''Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes'' of Thomas William Webb. The red stars are designated as Es-Birm. stars, index start at page 277.

That edition, available for free download on archive.org,, have two volumes.

In the volume dedicated to Starry Heavens ( what we call  now Deep Sky), the objects are given with designations valid today: like NGC  and  STF numbers. My humble opinion is this is a very valuable book.

 

Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes, fifth edition by Rev. T. E. Espin

 

Mircea

[Caroline Sinden Fuller]

2 hours ago, Mircea said:

The list of red stars of Espin is available in the edition revised by him of the ''Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes'' of Thomas William Webb. The red stars are designated as Es-Birm. stars, index start at page 277.

That edition, available for free download on archive.org,, have two volumes.

In the volume dedicated to Starry Heavens ( what we call  now Deep Sky), the objects are given with designations valid today: like NGC  and  STF numbers. My humble opinion is this is a very valuable book.

 

Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes, fifth edition by Rev. T. E. Espin

 

Mircea

Thank you, I will have a look at that book 

[icpn]

sounds need to do some research on who Espin was 🙂 He was asked to update Webb's book by Webb and then there were 3 further edtions, the last updated by Margaret Mayall as a Dover edtion in 1962.  He also was asked to update John Birmingham's list of red stars by Webb as Webb himself was too old by then, hence the Espin-Birmingham numbers. Unfortunately when he died all his notes along with Webb's letters etc. were destroyed.

[JeremyS]

Info on Espin here: https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2009JBAA..119..357H