Main Cassegrain telescope of the observatory of Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Stara Lesna with 60 cm (approx. 24 inches) diameter primary mirror has 7.5 m (approx. 25 feet) focal length. There are also finder telescope (10 cm diameter refractor with 1 m focal length) and auxiliary telescope (Cassegrain reflector with 15 cm diameter and 2.25 m focal length) on the same mount. The auxiliary telescope works as guider when photoelectric photometer is used for observations. The whole setup is placed in the dome with 5 m diameter.

There is a G4-9000 CCD camera on the telescope and also a small guiding camera G0-2000 on the off-axis guider. Current filter wheel is equipped with round 50 mm filters, which cover corners of the G4 camera large detector. This is why it will be replaced with the EFW4-5 filter wheel, integrated with the camera, for square NBVRI filters of 50 × 50 mm dimensions.

Observations performed with 60 cm telescope and CCD camera are focused to extrasolar planet transits and research of young open clusters (“YETI” campaigh). Part of the observing time is devoted to measurement of exact timing of low-mass binary stars minima as a part of the “Dwarf” campaign. This research uses minima timing for detection of extrasolar planets in such systems.

All images on this page courtesy of Theo Pribulla, AI SAV.