Manawatu astronomers excited to get telescope

The arrival of a deep-sky telescope, "which resolves beautiful star clusters", is exciting news for members of the Palmerston North Astronomical Society.

"The club is thrilled to get it. We have evaluated it, and the optics are very good. It is a quality instrument at a good price," president Ian Cooper said of the 20-inch Starsplitter.

The society has paid $5000 for the telescope, which would have cost more than $12,000 new, committee member and optics tester Peter Wilde said.

It was previously owned by a Japanese entrepreneur, who used it for tours he ran to the Mt John observatory near Tekapo.

"But it was too big, physically, for the needs of his clients, so he wanted to sell it," Mr Cooper said.

The Palmerston North Society tried the telescope and loved it - "and the cheque's in the mail", he said.

"Both Peter and I have looked through many large-aperture telescopes over the years. I can safely say this one's performance is right up there with the best of them," Mr Cooper said.

The Starsplitter is designed for deep-space viewing of objects such as star clusters, galaxies and nebulae. But Mr Wilde and Mr Cooper found that it is also good for the observation of planets.

"We had a fine view of Jupiter, with the Great Red Spot and Red Junior (an Earth-sized storm) both well seen. The Great Red Spot seems to have a dark band around it like a pharoah's eye liner, or is it Ma'a Nonu?" Mr Cooper said.

The telescope is likely to go to a dark-sky site, at least 5km out of Palmerston North, so that the best use can be made of its wonderful attributes, he said.

A digital encoder is being fitted, which will enable the telescope to link directly to a data base of many thousands of deep-sky objects, Mr Wilde said.

Astronomers still refer to the apertures of telescopes in inches, unless they are over a metre. They then go metric.

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