SPA-2 is an Officina Stellare 70cm (27.5 inches) F8 with RC design reflector telescope, situated in Oria, Spain. It is equipped with a set of Astrodon astrophotography and Sloan narrowband filters, and it is, therefore, an excellent choice for astrophotography of deep-sky objects and for scientific applications such as photometry.
Pricing
- 130 credits per hour of utilisation
Telescope Specification
- Model: Officina Stellare 700 RC
- Aperture: 700 mm
- Focal Length: 5600 mm
- F-ratio: 8.0
- Mount: Officina Stellare equatorial fork mount with absolute encoders and direct drives
- Minimum elevation: 30 degrees
Camera Specification
- Model: FLI PL16803 (spec sheet)
- Pixel Size: 9 μm/px
- Pixel Array: 4096 x 4096
- Pixel Resolution: 0.33 arcsec/pixel (bin 1), 0.66 arcsec/pixel (bin 2)
- Cooling: -25 degrees
- Field of View: 22.5 x 22.5 arcmin
- Filters (50mm square): Astrodon LRGB 2GEN, Ha (3nm), SII (3nm), OIII (3nm), Sloan r, Sloan g, Sloan i
- Position angle: up is 179.7 degrees E of N
- Allowed exposure times (in seconds): 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 180, 240, 300, 450, 600
- Available binning: 1, 2 (default: 2)
- Readout mode: 1 Mhz without RBI Flood
- Automated calibration: Yes, the images will be provided fully calibrated in FITS format. You will also be able to download the calibration frames.
Guiding
- Active guiding: Enabled (off axis guider)
- Guiding camera: Starlight Xpress Ultrastar (not currently used)
Overheads
- Initial set up, including focusing and target centring: 6 min
- Image overhead (readout, download, plate solution):
- For binning 1: 45 sec
- Change filter: 15 sec
- Refocusing: 6 min
Calibration frames
- Flat field frames for each filter are acquired using an Aurora Flat Field panel
- Darks are acquired for each allowed exposure time
Observatory
- Site: IC Astronomy
- Location: Oria, Almería, Spain
- Coordinates: 37.4988 N,-2.42178 W (Google maps)
- Elevation: 1250 m
- Average seeing: 1.5'' - 2.5''
- MPC code: Z08