I’ve been doing a bit of an office clear-out and would like to get rid of some of the extra astronomy texts that are taking up shelf space. Some of these books are a few years old, some are relatively new, but all go over the basics of astronomy and often cosmology.

So if you’re interested in learning more about the night sky, our solar system, or other galaxies and beyond, come to the UPEI campus and pick up a book. I’ve piled them up in a stack outside my office, Duffy Science Centre room 415, so you can come by at any time whenever the building is unlocked (i.e. weekdays from very early to very late, sometimes on weekends).

What happens when the laboratory technicians are assessing the equipment in the physics storeroom and notice a long wooden box on the top shelf? 

They open up the box and find a telescope.

It may seem strange to not know that we had this telescope, but a combination of changing astronomy instructors with a departmental move (that causes equipment to end up in new unknown locations) can result in an item getting forgotten.

This telescope is a 6-inch Newtonian reflector. I’m not sure how old it is – it sort of has a ’70s look to me. Perhaps this was the first telescope that UPEI Physics had in the 1970s, when observations took place on the roof of the Duffy building. It does have homemade replacement dust covers, which would fit with the story of how the original dust covers blew off the roof during a windy observation session.

The telescope was made by Anchor Optical Co. which now seems to exist as Anchor Optics (a division of Edmund Optics) that makes specialized lenses for research and educational applications.

Given the telescope’s size, it should be great for field work. We have material to build a solar filter, so this will probably also become our solar telescope.