Australia's largest optical telescope

[davenn]

Have been doing a bit of a road trip around the state of NSW, Australia, over this last week.
Visited the Parkes 36m radio telescope. Then on to Coonabarabran and the home of the Siding
Springs Observatory complex.
One of the several scopes here is the 3.9m AAT (Anglo-Australian Telescope)The largest optical
scope in Australia

1) Dome and Moon -- moon setting
2) view of scope from public observation room
3) aerial view from 30m above visitor carpark (quad-copter drone)
4) scope info

cheers
Dave

 

[jedishrfu]

I like the setting moon photo. Did you plan for it or was it just serendipitous?

It looks like the scope is projecting the moon image.

 

[davenn]

I like the setting moon photo. Did you plan for it or was it just serendipitous?

pure luck ... was driving along the road around 2 km before the turn off to go up the mountain to the observatory. I glanced up through
a clearing in the trees and saw the main scope dome. Then saw the moon right above it. Found a spot to quickly stop the car and
then walk back about 50m to again get the moon over the dome. 20 to 30 minutes later and the Moon would have been too low.

Dave

 

[jedishrfu]

My wife had a serendipitous moment like that and she didn’t realize it until months later. She took a sunset photo and there was a curious black circle partially occluding the sun which she thought at the time was a circular shaped cloud. She used it as her screen display on her iPad.

I saw it thought was pretty odd and looked up the date to discover a solar eclipse event that was supposedly viewable in Arizona but not in Texas. Surprise surprise she photographed a partial solar eclipse.