Two years ago, our group had to make the difficult decision to dismantle our beloved dome observatory, dedicated to astrophotography. The dome had become more of a hazard and was no longer something we used for our consistently growing public programs, so we knew it was time to move on.
The original plan was to build a new roof roll-off with a permanently mounted astrophotography setup, much like the dome, but after consulting our astrophotography expert, Brian, we decided our best move was to purchase a Celestron Origin Smart Scope. This scope is easy to set up and use for our personal use, and it will also bring an element of astrophotography to our public and private programs that we previously could not easily integrate.
Last night was the first night we used it for our public program, and although there are still some kinks to work out, it was still a successful night!
The first photograph is the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) and was captured on Thursday, June 18th, when a couple of our members were out testing it further.
The second photograph was our best one of the night from our public program on Saturday, June 20th, and features the Dumbbell Nebula (Messier 27). Additional credit to our assistant astrophotographers Allison and Jillian on this one.
This telescope will be a valuable asset to our group, and we look forward to finding the best ways to integrate it into our programs! For you purest out there, don’t worry – we still use our more traditional telescopes and binoculars and have no plans of changing!
All of our equipment, including this scope, would not be possible without the generous donations from all of our guests, and we can’t thank you and the park staff for making it all at Wyalusing State Park!