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Overview
Oak Mountain Observatory which is located at an elevation of 3900 feet in the Blue
Ridge mountains of North Carolina has been in operation for two years.
The observatory uses a 10 inch f/6.3 equatorially mounted remotely operated telescope
equipped with a 0.4 mega pixel thermal-electrically cooled CCD camera. A
Pentium class computer, located in a heated room approximately 10 feet from the
mount is used to point the telescope and control the image acquisition process.
The system maintains its orientation when powered down so a known star can be
positioned within a few arc minutes of the center of the CCD at startup.
The telescope can be operated in fully automated mode to acquire approximately a
thousand images across the sky during the night or used in the auto guide mode to acquire
deep images with exposures up to an hour in length. A filter wheel is
integrated into the system to obtain color and infra red images. The
filter wheel can be equipped with a Johnson-Cousins UBVRI filter set to measure
stellar temperatures. A self
guiding spectroscope with a resolution of 0.2 nanometers can be attached to the
telescope to obtain spectra of stars and nebula. In December of 1999 a
series of spectra of Nova Aquilae #2 were obtained which show the rapid changes
in the light spectrum from the nova. The complete set of processed curves
is presented in the Nova portion Spectroscopy section.
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