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General Information
Technical Data
Instruments
Computers
History
Image Gallery
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The AIP 0.7m Telescope, originally built in 1958 as a classical cassegrain for photoelectric photometry, is located in the west dome of the main building at Sternwarte Babelsberg , one of the two formerly separate observatories in Potsdam (see also Telegrafenberg ). Dispite some limitations of the site in the vicinity of the cities of Potsdam and Berlin, the telescope was overhauled in 1994 and is now in use for the following purposes:
The site is located near the Schlosspark Babelsberg in Potsdam, at an elevation of 66m above sea level, at geographical longitude - 52m 25.49s and latitude + 52d 24m 24s.
- training and education
- test of instrumentation
- selected scientific programmes
- public information
Meteorological conditions are more or less typical for Central Europe, seeing is typically 2-3 arcsec, and sky background about 18 mag per square arcsec in V.
- main mirror diameter: 700mm
- focal length: 10500mm
- focal ratio: f/15
- plate scale: 0.051mm/arcsec
- FOV (with TK1024): 8 x 8 arcmin^2 with 0.47 arcsec/pixel sampling
- Mounting: Zeiss VIII Knickmontierung
- telescope control: electro-mechanical tracking mechanism, handsets for slewing and guiding
- guiding telescope 200/3000 with eyepiece on precision xy-stage
The telescope is used for direct imaging and has a dedicated CCD camera which can be used in combination with different detector systems.AIP/TK1024-01
This system is a cryogenic Photometrics AT200-CE200A-CH260 with a thinned SITe 1k x 1k chip
- TK1024AB2
- readout 16bit, 40kHz
- total readout time for full frame: approx. 25 sec
- operational temperature: -110 C
- dark current: 0.85 e/hour
- full well: 400000 e
- gain 1: 6.13 e/ADU, ron = 5.7 e
- gain 4: 1.51 e/ADU, ron = 3.1 e
Currently, the two CCD cameras are controlled by a 19" industrial PC which is located in the dome. This PC is connected to the LAN by ethernet and allows to transfer data to any workstation by ftp. In the near future, a SPARC10 workstation will be available for data acquisition and on-line data reduction.
| 1913 | Berlin Observatory moves to Babelsberg |
| 1917 | Double-Astrograph (Toepfer-Potsdam) finished |
| 1945 | removal of Astrograph and Dome; transfer to Russia |
| 1952 | reconstruction of the dome (Carl Zeiss Jena) |
| 1952 | installation of intermediate 52cm-reflector (Wilke-Finkenkrug), |
| new photometric equipment (galvanometer) | |
| 1954 | start of regular observations (Hinderer) |
| 1958 | installation of 70cm reflector, upgrade of photometric data registration |
| 1962 | replacement of first main mirror by Zeiss mirror after damage |
| 1970 | testing of instrumentation |
| 1994 | major overhaul and installation of modern instruments |
This part is under construction !
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