Acquisition of a CCD and Related Instrumentation for the Whitin Observatory, and Publication of Procedures for Retrofitting CCDs to Small Telescopes

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ABSTRACT Hawkins, R. Lee AST-9413335 The PIs will install on the Wellesley College's 24-inch Boller & Chivens reflector telescope a semi-custom Guide- Acquire Module (GAM) that includes a custom-designed focal reducer/field flattener and filter wheel. This instrument will allow virtually instantaneous instrument selection between the on-axis beam and 4 radial instrument ports; to upgrade the secondary cell/focus housing so that it will be both more repeatable and rigid than the current set up; to acquire a Tektronix 1024x1024 thinned, back-side illuminated CCD system to increase the field size by factor of roughly 2.5 and the quantum efficiency by a factor of roughly 2.0; and to install active and passive dome ventilation in order to equilibrate the temperature of the dome structure more quickly, to help minimize the effects of dome seeing. Finally, the PIs will acquire two large hard disks drives for their workstation in order to deal with the larger images with the larger CCD. Because these problems are not unique to Wellesley, the PIs plan to publish the results of this project in detailed, comprehensive review article on retrofitting CCDs to small telescopes. The resulting telescope improvement, will gently enhance the research and educational capability of the Wellesley College Observatory. ***