A visit to Coona (that’s what the locals call it) wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Siding Springs Observatory, home of a dozen telescopes including the 25 year old and Australia’s largest optical telescope, the Anglo Australian Telescope. The 3.9 meter primary mirror makes it little large for your everyday "grab and go" scope and its unlikely its going to fit into the back of the Corolla. There isn't anywhere for an eyepiece anyway. Every year the primary mirror is removed and recoated with a scant 2.8 grams (about a thimble full) of aluminum.
The visitor centre has a hall that is full of hands on exhibits that should keep the kiddies and adults amused with exhibits ranging from how the distance of stars are calculated to the difference of how much a milk carton might weigh on different planets. It is badly outdated though and looks as if it hasn't been updated much over the past decade. Surprised to find there is nothing on Rob McNaught and his world famous comet that was discovered through the sites Uppsala Southern Schmidt Telescope.
Well worth a look.
Cheers
Deeno
Driving back through the Warrumbungles after sunset I was lucky to catch the AAT’s dome open and Mars in the same frame through a gap in the trees.
Yes its well worth the visit. One really interesting trip I had there was a few of us following Rob Mcnaught up there at night. Half way up it was lights off and parkers only, he told us that closer to the mountaintop it would be no lights at all, but when we got to the top he still left his parkers on, lighting up the UK Schmidt dome, it was then I noted no stars, low cloud had descended. This was back in the days when Rob operated the Hewitt satellite camera, and I got to try out my then brand new 16mm Nagler and UHC filter on his 12 inch dob. WOW eta carina from Siding spring with that setup was a sight to behold.
Im really envious of the night assistants there though, one of them while in the AAT prime focus cage, used a 10x magnifier to "look around" getting a 156 inch f3.3 view of the sky. He said that one had to avoid bright stars as they were like welding torches and could literally damage your eyes!
Nice shots too. They used to have a real iron meteroite in the visitor centre, you could pick it up, it was on a short length of chain, it was literally like a solid lump or iron. I heard it has since been stolen.
Scott
