Towards Tucson

This is the view towards Tucson from the top of the VATT building on Mount Graham. The setting sun lights up the right side of the frame and the VATT dome is on the left. On the horizon just right of the VATT dome are the Rincon Mountains. Just right of the tall pine tree near center are the Santa Catalinas. In the middle, foreground, just left of the tall pine are the Gallieros, I believe. In the distance between the Rincons and Catalinas over redington Pass is Kitt Peak. This image was taken at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 1/400 seconds at f/13, ISO 400.

VATT control room

My friend Dave looks over one of the consoles in the VATT control room. The room is on the 2nd floor above the main living area and adjacent to some work areas. Every area of the building had some sort of equipment related to running the telescope, whether it was computers that run the drive motors or compressors feeding air into the many systems. The VATT control room is one of the more comfortable control rooms I've seen at a telescope. Our control rooms at both Spacewatch telescopes, for example, do not have any carpeting (we are concerned about the static discharges that may come from that as much of our equipment that runs the telescope is in or adjacent to the control rooms, for example). This image was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 1/13 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 800.

Anticrepuscular rays & the LBT

Anticrepuscular rays are visible in the skies over Mount Graham in this image. The rays almost converge on the LBT. The SMT is left of the LBT and the VATT dome is visible on the right edge with the quarter phase moon just to its left. This image was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 1/40 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 400.

VATT at work

This shot of the VATT at work in moonlight was almost a great shot. When I first brought it up on my computer, I instantly exclaimed "D'Oh!" - The handle of my tripod is jutting out into the field of this fisheye view! The dark cylindrical object at lower left is the silhouette of the handle. I often mount my camera on the tripod with the vertical tilt handle in front of the camera so I can tilt the camera and tripod up to vertical for astrophotography. That's normally not a problem, unless you use an 8mm fisheye as I did here..... This image used an exposure of 120 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 400.

Fisheye VATT

This fisheye view of the VATT building also shows the glow of the Moon behind the dome at left as well as the Milky Way and the forest. The building is lit by some red lights on the SMT entrance but doesn't affect the observing inside the building. This image was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 120 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 400.

MGIO in Moonlight

The Mount Graham International Observatory is seen here, lit by a just larger than quarter phase Moon. The Moon is hidden behind the dome of the VATT (Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope) on the right which is also lit by the red security light. On the far left is the SMT (Sub-Millimeter Telescope) and just right of that is the LBT (Large Binocular Telescope). This view is looking just south and east of the zenith to show the southeastern sky. The Milky Way is visible at the top of the frame as are a number of bright constellations such as Cygnus, Pegasus, Andromeda, Aquila & Cassiopiea. The Andromeda Galaxy can also be seen in this image if you know where to look. This image was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 120 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 400.

VATT take 3

This is the Vatican Observatory building as viewed from the northeast. This image was take at 21mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/6.3, ISO 100.

VATT take 2

This is a fisheye view of the VATT telescope with a bit more light than in my previous picture of it. The telescope is on an alt-azimuth mount which means one axis of the mount rotates around the vertical (the azimuth axis) while the other perpendicular axis rotates around the horizontal (the altitude axis). The mount is the yellow part of the telescope. The telescope itself is white and exceptionally short due to its f/1 Gregorian design which gives an effective f/9 at the camera despite the 1.8-meter mirror. The CCD camera can be seen at the bottom of the white part of the telescope inside the yellow fork of the mount. The image was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 1/8 seconds at f/8, ISO 1600.

Satellite & Clouds at the VATT

A satellite trail appears to merge with a pole rising from the left edge of this fisheye view of the pre-twilight, cloud infested sky at the VATT on Sunday morning. The red light illuminating buildings and poles and trees is from the nearby entrance light at the SMT. This image was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 2 minutes at f/3.5, ISO 1600.

VATT

Dave let me borrow his 8mm fisheye lens, so I put it to good use to take some pictures of the VATT telescope. The telescope has a 1.8-m f/1 primary mirror, making it a very short telescope in a very small dome. The building it is housed in is one of the prettiest I've seen at an observatory with a lounge and kitchen and 4 dorm rooms along with the control room, all in the same building with the telescope. This image was taken at 8mm focal length with an exposure of 30 seconds at f/8, ISO 400 with some painting of the telescope and dome with my LED flashlight.