CHAMÄLEON + ONJALA OBSERVATORY

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The picture on the right shows the fully motorized 4 meter dome (from ScopeDome) of the Onjala observatory. Supplier of the dome was Astrolumina (Mr. M. Breite). The parts of the dome were brought from Poland to Walvis Bay by container ship and then transported by truck to Onjala.

The 20 square meters vestibule of the dome is used as the common room for the guests of the lodge during the evening events. Additionally, some of our private equipment for the 3 meter dome is stored here. The entire building was built under the guidance of Heiner Soltau by workers of the lodge. You can find picture galleries from the building shell to the mounting of the instruments here.


All preview pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

 
The load bearing element of the Onjala telescope is a GTO 1200 mount by AstroPhysics. Fixed on the mount are:
  • Zeiss APQ refractor (150/1.200 mm), a
  • Celestron C14 (356/3.900 mm) and a
  • - Zeiss AS (80/800 mm) as guiding telescope
The telescope is mainly used for visual astronomical observations by the guests of the lodge. Of course, the equipment can also be used for photographic as well as Webcam observations.
The whole equipment was previously situated in a 3.2 meter dome at the Rooisand Desert Ranch (where a new telescope was mounted in the Summer of 2013) and was bought by Onjala lodge in 2012. For visual observations a Baader Binocular with matching oculars is available.

After the evening events we can use the telescope for our own observations. The Celestron 14 was hand selected from several candidates and has a remarkably high optical quality, impressively demonstrated by our pictures of the moon. open star clusters and large-area nebula.

The Zeiss refractor is a great telescope to photograph open star clusters and large-area nebula.
The picture shows Paech during the first test observations - still using an old ladder - after the mounting in April 2013..

Sun Moon Solar System DeepSky Widefield Miscellaneous Spec. Projects
 
All Images and all Content are © by Franz Hofmann + Wolfgang Paech