Demonstration of Wallace Astrophysical Observatory's 24-inch telescope upgrade

Abstract

As part of an ongoing effort to renovate the George R. Wallace Astrophysical Observatory, a new control system and imaging instrument were implemented for the 24-inch telescope. A redesigned telescope drive mechanism and an adaptation of the Lowell Observatory MOVE control system were installed to automate telescope operations. The telescope optics were configured to an f/15 Cassegrain with a resolution of 1 arcsecond, and a large-format commercial CCD detector was installed. The optical configuration gave a pixel scale of 0.55 arcseconds/pixel, covering a field of 0.220 across the diagonal of the detector. As a demonstration of the upgraded system, photometric and astrometric measurements were made to an accuracy of 0.1 magnitudes and better than 1 arcsecond, respectively, under poor atmospheric conditions.