Click on a photo to see a larger version of the image.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

LBT at sunset

This view of the LBT (Large Binocular Telescope) building on Mount Graham was taken from the roof of the VATT telescope building just before sunset. Unfortunately, the blue sky behind the building was not representative of the sky behind me and to the south which had lots of scattered clouds. This image was taken at 55mm focal length with an exposure of 1/320 seconds at f/11, ISO 400.
Posted by Picasa

4 comments:

Tuguldur said...

I had signed for the university's astronomy club. They said to organize a trip to that monster, and others around Pima... I cannot wait....

Jim said...

When will you be coming up here? Don't forget to look at the "little" VATT telescope building. I went over to the LBT this afternoon and climbed up to the 6th floor. You are right, that telescope is a MONSTER! It's Huge. Your kit lens will not be nearly wide enough. Even the 8mm wasn't quite wide enough for some shots.

Tuguldur said...

I am still not sure.. that guy who heads the club is kinda weird and very confusing buddy...

I had found that VATT is a wonderful scope that beats up bigger brothers by its genuine technology at the perfect location.

BTW, I had purchased a second hand lens converter from Opteka/maybe Optek, Opteek/,anyways something I had never heard of. The images taken with it was quite good for 17$.

Also, yesterday was my first night at the 21", but it was helly cloudy.. I tried to do some cloud hopping/hole soccer/, unfortunately the operators from the day before had forgot to leave the computer turned on,,, so all the alignments were off...

I see through Dave's and your pictures that LBT is so huge. But I cannot imagine how would it be when I am standing myself on that 6th floor.... oh boy

Jim said...

Computers on the ol' 21 inch, eh? When I used it, we had to manually slew it around the sky and use the setting circles..... And our detector was the good old Mk I eyeball. :-)

Another really cool thing about the LBT is that there is a central core that does not rotate and the rest of the building that does, so you go into the building in the stationary part and take an elevator or stairs to the 4th floor, also called the transfer floor. Then you walk into a circular hall and where the next elevator or stairs are depends on which way the building (and telescope) are rotated.