spacelaserawareness

Schmidt Telescope + Confirmation Refracting Telescope

The Objective Prism Telescope in New Mexico. It performs spectroscopy of all objects within a 1-degree field-of-view, with exposures of 1 second. It detects ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light.

The large wedge prism in front of the Objective Prism Telescope. Glass surfaces are flat to 1/4 of the wavelength of light,
and it transmits ultraviolet, visible, and IR wavelengths.

All-sky camera, monitoring performance of the Objective Prism Telescope during the night.

Counterweights and honeycomb back-side of the primary mirrors on the Objective Prism telescope.

NGC 7027: A planetary nebula with rich spectral emission lines.

Spectrophotometry of the rich spectral emission lines measured for NGC7027 by the Objective Prism Telescope.

0.5-meter fast, wide-field imagining telescope (owned by NORDITA).

A 4-second exposure of the Double Cluster in Perseus.

StellarVue Refracting Telescope

Piggybacking on the RASA is a custom StellarVue refracting telescope, with aperture 80mm, f-ratio f/5.25, and focal length=420mm. It has a field flattener and focal reducer. The prism at the front has the same 7-degree wedge angle as on the RASA and the same dispersive glass type, but has a square cross section 75mm x 75mm. It rides piggyback on the RASA, always pointing toward the same location in the night sky.The specifications of StellarVue refractors are here:stellarvue.com

The ZWO ASI1600MM camera has a sensor with a 31mm diagonal length, giving a field of view of 4.2 degrees diagonal, similar to that of the RASA system.

The StellarVue and its ASI1600MM camera serve to confirm or reject detected laser pulse candidates identified by the RASA Schmidt system, albeit with lower signal-to-noise by a factor of 4.

The double objective prism telescope: the RASA Schmidt and the StellarVue refractor piggybacking on top, with its red ZWO ASI1600 cooled, CMOS camera. Both telescope have a 7-degree prism wedge in front. Also shown is a small finder scope to update the coordinate telescope pointing model

The Double Objective Prism Telescope

Schmidt Telescope + Confirmation Refracting Telescope

StellarVue Refracting Telescope