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Hi all,

Warm weather is here and I'm sure many of us will be asked to have a public observing night by somebody or some organization.

OK, money no object - what are the top 3 best telescopes to use when you are doing an open public night observing program?

Allister

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Well, I would say that the SCT has a lot going for it, so it would probably be one of the three. Beyond this, a rich-field Newtonian or refractor in the 4 to 8 inch range fills a niche for the public. Big Dobs are also nice, but those with non-rotatable tubes and without drives can be tiring on the public. At Hyde Observatory, our three main instruments are a C14, an old 12 inch Starliner Newtonian/Cassegrain, and an 8 inch f/6 Newtonian. We are about to replace our 12 inch with a NexStar 11 SCT, so you can see how our experience (and mine with my own NexStar) has changed our way of thinking. We have had a number of times where we have jury-rigged a camcorder to one of our scopes and fed the image back into the lecture hall and up on our video projector, so we wish to do this on a more permanent basis. With increasing emphasis on electronic imaging, our current scope line is not keeping pace, so the new NexStar 11 will be doing the majority of the electronic stuff. Eventually, I imagine that the C14 will be "updated" as well. Clear skies to you.

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David W. Knisely
Hyde Memorial Observatory
http://www.hydeobservatory.info

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