Our Back Parking Lot (or BPL) site behind the Santa Barbara Headquarters is our primary test assembly for the 0.4 and 1m classes of telescope (for recent progress see Rachel's blog entry, Site Development at Sedgwick and the Back Parking Lot ). We are testing everything here, from the manual and automated control system, to the mechanics of the enclosures, weather station, and durability.
This image of the Horsehead Nebula in the constellation of Orion, was taken on one of the two 0.4m telescopes in BPL (co-located in one Aqawan enclosure ). There are little dust doughnuts on it, which would easily be taken care of by flat-fielding. Some of the stars have strange shapes because of charge-bleed which comes from slight over-exposure. Given that this is very early example of what the telescope can do from the edge of a city, at virtually sea level, just think what will be possible when we have these telescopes at the top of remote mountains and volcanoes with really good sky conditions.
Congratulations to everyone involved!
N.B. This is a 600s exposure with a 0.4m and SBIG CCD.
