SAAO 0.5-m Telescope
The 0.5-m telescope was built by Boller & Chivens in 1967 for the Republic Observatory, then moved to the current observing site near Sutherland in 1972. Telescope specifics are listed in the table below; the optical diagram is given in Figure 1.
Cassegrain Focus | f/18, 22.6 arcsec/mm |
Instrumentation | |
Guider-Finder | 100 mm f/9.1 |
Figure 1. Optical diagram of the SAAO 0.5-m telescope.
Instrument Computer
A PC runs the Modular Photometer using the program LUCY (all-sky photometry) or MILLY (uninterrupted observations on one object with one filter with integration times in the range 2 ms-60 sec). Data are stored on hard disk and copied to 1.4Mb floppy. A printer is available.
Visitors' Instrumentation
Special equipment should weigh less than 25 kg and be less than 1 m long. The layout of mounting holes for fixing instruments is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. 0.5-m telescope mirror cell. Diameter in mm.
