Telescopes & Instruments

The Wise Observatory hosts five scientific telescopes:

• The 1-meter Telescope
  
  A Boller and Chivens wide field Ritchey-Chretien Reflector mounted on a rigid, off-axis equatorial mount. The telescope was installed in 1971. The optics are of a Mount Wilson/Palomar Observatories design, consisting of a 40 inch diameter clear aperture f/4 primary mirror and a 20.1 inch diameter f/7 Cassegrain secondary mirror. This setup provides a field of up to 2.5 degrees in diameter with very little distortion.
  
  Currently the telescope is part of the Las Cumbres global network, connected to the high resolution NRES spectrograph 100% of the time. Previous instruments include various CCD direct imaging cameras, The Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (FOSC; for spectroscopy, polarimetry, and imaging), the Large Area Imager at Wise Observatory (LAIWO), and eShel (an R~10000 echelle fiber-fed spectrograph).
  
   

• The Centurion 28-inch (C28) Telescope
  
  Also named “The Jay Baum Rich telescope” following a generous donation by Mike Rich in memory of his father. The telescope was manufactured by the AstroWorks company led by Jim Riffle and was installed at the Wise Observatory in 2013. It is a prime focus telescope with a Centurion 28-inch prime mirror of f/3.2. The telescope is mounted with a Finger Lakes Instrumentation (FLI) ProLine PL16801 camera housing a KAF-16801 CCD at prime focus. The CCD has 4096x4096 pixels of 9 square micron size each with a pixel scale of 0.834 arcseconds per pixel. This provides a field of view of 56.9×56.9 arcmin (0.95×0.95 degrees). A filter wheel with 5 slots is available which can be loaded with various narrow and broad band filters. In addition, a CMOS QHY174 camera is available with a pixel scale of 0.54 arcseconds per pixel and a field of view of 10.8x17.3 arcminutes. This camera has no filters.
  
   

• The Centurion 18-inch (C18) Telescope
  
  This telescope was manufactured by the AstroWorks company led by Jim Riffle and was installed at the Wise Observatory in 2003. It is a prime focus telescope with a Centurion 18-inch prime mirror of f/2.8. The telescope is mounted with a QSI683 camera housing a KAF-8300 CCD at prime focus. The CCD has 3326x2504 pixels of 5.4 square micron size each with a pixel scale of 0.882 arcseconds per pixel. This provides a field of view of 48.9×36.8 arcmin (0.815×0.613 degrees). Two filter wheels in front of that camera allow for 14 slots which can be loaded with various narrow and broad band filters.
  
   

• The University of Haifa 80-cm (H80) Telescope
  
  An ASA (Astro Systeme Austria) manufactored 80-cm telescope purchased by Prof. Doron Chelouche from the University of Haifa and hosted at the Wise Observatory. This is an f/2.5 Ritchey-Chretien design telescope. The telescope is mounted with a custom made instrument which has 22 narrow and broad filters and two imaging cameras: a QHY461 CMOS camera and a QHY550 CMOS Polarizer. The cameras can easily be swapped at the focal plane using a flip mirror.
  
   

• The KASI 50-cm Telescope
  
  A 50-cm telescope manufactured by Officina Stellare and installed at the Wise Observatory by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). It is operated remotely from the KASI center in South Korea. The telescope is mounted with an SBIG CCD camera and a filter wheel with 5 slots with broad band filters.
  
   

Technical information about the telescopes and instruments can be found at this web site.
 

The Observatory hosts two additional telescopes:

• The Celestron 14-inch Satellite Tracker Telescope
  
  This telescope was installed and is operated by ComSPOC (Commercial Space Operations Center) based in the USA.
  
   

• The 5-inch amateur telescope
  
  Installed and operated by an amateur astronomer who is based in the UK.