Spring 2007

The WCU Observatory is a teaching facility of the Department of Geology & Astronomy. For more information, please contact Dr. Marc Gagné at (610) 436-3014 or mgagne@wcupa.edu or Dr. Karen Vanlandigham at (610) 436-2788 or at kvanlandingham@wcupa.edu.

The West Chester University Telescope

West Chester University has a 14-inch Celestron CM-1400 and a 10-inch Meade LX-200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. The telescopes can be equipped with a digital CCD camera from Santa Barbara Instrument Group (SBIG model ST-7E) and SBIG stellar spectrograph. The CCD camera is being used with an SBIG filter wheel to obtain RGB digital color images of deep-sky objects, mostly planetary and emission nebulae, nearby galaxies, and globular clusters. In the near future, we will have the spectrograph on line for medium-resolution optical spectra of stars and nearby galaxies. Stellar spectra will be used to assemble an atlas of MK standards to illustrate the spectral typing of stars. Galaxy spectra will be used to identify emission lines and measure redshift.

The telescope has become a central component of Intermediate Astronomy (ESS 355/555). The equipment is also available for undergraduate research projects.