The UPEI Physics is saying “Farewell”, potentially forever, to our Meade 14″ RCX 400. It’s always had electronic issues during cold weather, but now it’s having electronics issues with it’s focusing.  As the people who attended our last monthly viewing can attest, a telescope that’s meant to be focus controlled electronically is very hard to use when that’s not working.

We’ll be taking apart the telescope to see if we can fix it. It’s not supported by Meade anymore (legacy product).  If it can be fixed, we’ll bring it back up to the dome.

In the meantime, we’d like to say “Hello” to our new Meade LX80 Multi-Mount with 8″ f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.  Received as a kind donation from Pat Sinnott, it’s smaller so we’ll have more room to maneuver in the dome, has a manual focus.  As it’s more portable, we’ll have the potential to take it out in the field or set up daytime solar viewings when we get the necessary safety filters. With the right optics, we should be able to see almost everything we saw with our 14″ RCX400 and potentially be able to add more features such as astrophotography. It’s set up right now and we’re doing preliminary testing. We hope to have it up and running by our July 20th Saturday viewing.

We’re also saying “Hello” to our new WordPress hosted website.  We’ve got some ideas on promoting astronomy in general and astronomy at UPEI.  In cooperation with the Charlottetown RASC (Royal Astronomical Society of Canada), we’re planning changes for our public viewing structure for the fall of 2013.  More news posted as it’s confirmed. We hope you enjoy the new site and that we are able to showcase the UPEI astronomy events.