[Barrykgerdes]

Those big observatories are public funded and are always short of money. They raise much needed revenue by public openings.

Incidently The ESO who have vast resources of astronomical data used some of their money to commission a friend of mine, Fabien to write a program to help them access this data. It is called Virgo and is available free for download. It is based on Stellarium and. This commision allowed Fabien to work full time on the Virgo/Stellarium project for three years to all our advantage.

You can't look through the big telescopes on these viewing sessions so the observatories have these smaller visual scopes to satisfy the viewers.

Where do they get these scopes. Mostly by donations from the manufacturers. Remember the old saying "Never look a gift horse in the mouth"

Barry