Equipment
Installing the Telescope.
In 2009 the 'Little Blue 22' was installed in the 10' square building with a 'roll-off' roof, From 2003 to 2009 prior to the 22" (.57 meter) reflector being installed I used a Meade 12" (.3 meter) lx-200 as my principle telescope. I purchased the primary mirror (Pyrex) and constructed a rather heavy telescope with materials I mostly had on hand. Some components came from an earlier 17.5" Newtonian reflector telescope.
The current .57 meter telescope weighs in at approximately 1/2 ton. The base uses 4 x 8 x 3/8" thick walled rectangular steel tubing ( the V-shaped - white supports at the bottom). I chose to remove the south wall to install the telescope then rebuild it the wall with a bay extension for easy access to the front of the telescope tube to make it easier to load a camera at the prime focus. There is no secondary mirror involved as the telescope is only used to image using a CCD camera and not look through.
Sandlot's camera
The principal camera used at Sandlot is an SBIG STL 6303E. It has 6.3 million - 9 micron pixels and a peak QE of 68%. The sensor size Is 27.7 x 18.5 mm. Its considered to be an APS sized chip. The imaging chip can be cooled via a TEC from -35 to -40 C delta of ambient temperature. It takes about 20 seconds to download a full frame image due to it being a USB 1.1 interface.
The camera-telescope combination can reach 22 magnitude in about 25-30 minutes given favorable clear skies. Included is a set of RGB filters and a 'V' photometric filter. The V filter is useful for standardizing magnitude measurements.
remote operation
I'm controlling the telescope and camera remotely via a DS-600 USB to Ethernet adapter. This allows for complete operation of the telescope and camera from the comfort of my house. The observatory is about 80 foot from my house. I installed an underground pipe for Ethernet cable and auxiliary 110VAC and 12VDC power from the observatory to the house.