UT Feb 21, 2022: Tests of a "guest" camera on the 12-inch telescope

Michael Richmond
Feb 21, 2022

On the night of Feb 20/21, 2022, AST grad student Lazar Buntic and RIT undergraduate Michaela Cohen brought a "guest" camera to the Observatory. Lazar is testing a new camera on behalf of the RIT's Center for Detectors. The primary goal was to verify that we could mount the camera and its filterwheel on the 12-inch telescope; a secondary goal was to acquire flatfield images, and, if possible, images of any star(s).

We discovered several things over the course of a couple of hours:

1. the camera is too heavy for the electronic focuser on the telescope, so we had to remove the focuser and mount the camera directly to the telescope's back plate
2. the filterwheel's 1.25-inch slide tube has no holes or inset ring to help setscrew(s) hold on to it -- so the camera wasn't held securely on the telescope
3. twilight sky flats close to the zenith revealed a moderate number of dust donuts and other artifacts
4. we could not figure out how to move the telescope so that stars seen on the finder's TV screen would enter the camera's field of view
5. the camera was way, way out of focus at the fixed location at which we could connect it

Lazar took notes on the connector issues, and plans to construct a more robust set of adapters so that we can attach the camera securely to the telescope in future tests.

Below are a set of notes taken by Michaela Cohen.

• notes from first tests of CfD camera