OAC Photo: McMath-Hulbert Collage

Oakland Astronomy Club Image

More McMath-Hulbert Pictures

Tower #2 is the middle tower, standing 50 feet high. This tower contains a coelostat, which acts as the "primary" for its spectoheliograph instrument. Solar movies were made in this tower from 1936 onward.	Mark & Alex Webb look on as Tom Hagen explains the workings of Tower #2. The tower is also home to this 12" f/15 Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope built by renown telescope maker, the late Max Bray.
$Tower #1 Dome and 6" Refractor$ Close-up of Tower #1 and its 6" refractor. This tower and telescope are functional, though a replacement Hydrogen-Alpha filter is sought by the restoration crew. The earliest movies of the sun were made in this tower with a 10" Cassegrain and the spectroheliogkinematograph.	The top of tower #3. Tower #3 is 70 feet high, and contains another system of mirrors that channel sunlight into a vacuum spectrograph. In this case, the spectrograph is located at the end of a 50 foot vacuum chamber. The vacuum eliminates contamination of the sun's spectrum by earthly airborne particles. This tower and its instrument are not operatonal.
That thing in the middle	The copper colored cylinder is an aluminizing chamber. This device was was used to apply reflective coating to observatory mirrors.