This shows the old telescope, which is a white 10 inch Schmidt Newtonian, built in 1963 by Nelson Lewis of the Detroit Astronomical society.
In the back by the wall is the old tube, which was disposed of (more on that later). You can see that old tube was 9 feet long. That telescope was also completed around 1962, before the observatory was built. That large tube held a 12 inch Newtonian that our middle school/ junior high astronomy club used to operate.
So there is two telescopes that are old, but one is disassembled with the mirror coating damaged and the mirror removed. The white tube ten inch telescope was used by many years from 1984 until 2003 or so by "the telescope man" a FAAC member named Harold Thomason. Harold had thousands of people look though the white tube telescope many in Dearborn Michigan in front of the library and police station. This telescope has a nice history,
When I saw the Newtonian telescope listed and overheard Harold talk about it, I wanted to see it. I checked out the white Newtonian and when I first saw it I was reminded of all the old telescope ads in the old days when large white tube Newtonians were in an making the person in the foreground look small. This Newtonian reminded me of those old Newtonians on their monster mounts and it was a little intimidating, to think about setting it up and using it. When I looked through it I was blown away by the optical quality. We looked at Jupiter and there were some clouds and dew the night I bought it, I could tell this was a great optical telescope and also it had a really nice wide field of view being an f5.35.
The Schmidt corrector was custom built back in 1962 by the same company that was building Celestron corrector plates.
In 1984 when Harold bought the telescope he called the company that built the corrector and asked what a replacement would run. When he mentioned the focal length, the guy on the other line said, oh that's a custom size. We can build one for you but you won't want to hear the price.
The price for a replacement corrector $1800.
Harold wanted to know in case it was broke. Of course at that price, if the corrector broke it would be cheaper to purchase a new telescope.
For the next several years Harold used the telescope and finally he had other smaller telescopes and a C14 of his own, so it was time to get rid of the big Newtonian. That's how I ended up with it.
Harold made a few different modifications with the telescope. I haven't really made any and probably could do a few things with the scope.
The telescope has a very small secondary mirror and is setup for visual viewing, not astrophotography. The mount is a mount Harold bought in 1984 for the telescope. The mount doesn't have a DEC motor just right ascension. The motor pulls 1 watt of power. It's an AC motor.
The mount is on wheels. I can wheel it out of the observatory, but I have to be careful because we raised the floor when the club and volunteers rebuilt and refurbished the observatory and the floor being raised, makes the door much shorter, so care has to be taken when wheeling it out as the scope has to be tilted and aimed out the low doorway before being wheeled out. Also the size of the base makes this a very careful and difficult process as the base has to be fitted through carefully.
Sometimes the telescope is stored in the observatory, other times I remove it for observing or storage elsewhere.
That's a little bit of history on the old telescopes.
The old large tube telescope was on a mount that was a manual mount that had been constructed with coffee cans and cement as counterweights. The old mount and scope were replaced with a new mount and telescope thanks to a grant from Toshiba Inc that the school system won. This allowed the school system to get a renovated observatory for basically no cost. There were many donors, and there is a plaque with some of the donors from the restoration in 2009.
We have a c14 and Losmandy Titan mount with a Meade 80mm f6 APO refractor and a Lunt 35mm HA solar scope in the observatory. We also have a couple of basic cameras for the observatory and I bring a t mount for anyone who happens to visit who wants to mount a canon Eos camera on the telescopes.
Things look a little different today. The tall dark Newtonian tube is gone, it's actually in Dearborn now.
There is a large shelving unit inside the observatory today which is not shown in the photo.
Greg
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