Observatory

Public Viewing Night Spring 2013

Several years ago Georgiana Rudge and Tom Whittemore found some telescopes stored and collecting dust in a storage room in the Physics Department. There were 2 Schmidt-Cassegrain Celestrons -- a 14” and an 8” -- and one 13” Dobsonian. The Celestrons were in good condition and were purchased in 1977 by the college.

The C-8 was quite portable but the C-14 was too big to carry easily. It's mount was also unsuitable. So in the fall of 1997, in order to utilize this large Schmidt-Cassegrain several of us began to think of having the C-14 permanently mounted in an observatory near our natural sciences building (Acacia).

We received seed money to begin the design phase for building the observatory in August 2000. Contract construction began in August 2002 and was completed in August 1, 2003. The drawing below shows what it would look like from above when in use.

An actual photo of the observatory shown below as it appeared on May 20. This photo was taken looking towards the East at the three buildings of the observatory complex from the direction of the Acacia building.

The Montgomery Hill Observatory as seen from the Acacia building

The building on the left in the above picture is a small classroom. Here we keep the 12 portable telescopes. (A 102 mm Vixen refractor, the C-8 and ten 8" dobsonian telescopes.)
The building on the right foreground is a 16' x 16' roll-off roof building for the C-14 telescope.
The building on the right (in the background) is a 5 meter dome building for the 7" TMB apochromatic refractor telescope.