My observatory sits in an open field in southern Maryland a few miles inland from the Chesapeake Bay (yes, that is why the control room looks like a ship's wheel house). The telescope is mounted on a concrete pier that is well separated from the control room to minimize local seeing effects.

The telescope is a 115 mm diameter f/7 (800 mm focal length) achromatic refractor that I built around a lens assembly that I picked up on the resale market. The lens was reported to be identical to the one used by Henry Paul in the telescope shown on page 314 of Amateur Telescope Making vol. III (1982 printing). In front of the objective lens is a full aperture filter consisting of a 125 mm diameter, 12 mm thick, fused silica window, with a wave front error of better than 1/5 wave. The window was coated by Melles Griot with a metallic neutral density coating to to an optical denity of 1.2 (6% transmission).

The instrument package (from the front aperture back) consists of a 4 mm diameter field stop, a 16 mm focal length projection lens that I got out of a junked high-end microfilm printer, a 9 nm bandwidth interference filter centered on 520 nm, a 70% transmission plate beam splitter (in the aluminum cube), an inexpensive black and white CCD video camera (on the reflection port of the beam splitter), and an Olympus OM-1 camera with a motor drive and data back that records the date and time. The beam splitter reflects 30% of the light to the video camera which is parfocal with the film camera. The video camera transmits an image to a monitor in the control room that I watch for moments of good seeing. The Olympus motor drive permits remote triggering and winding of the OM-1.