Prior to 2013 UBO housed a 16in Cassegrain telescope that we used for spectroscopy, and a 14in Schmidt Cassegrain Meade LX200R that we used for imaging. Further details of this period are available here.

The 0.5metre Alluna Optics Ritchey Chretien telescope is mounted on the original custom built massive English Equatorial mount that dates back to the inauguration of UBO in the early 1980s. We now drive the mount with the MKS 5000 telescope control system from Software Bisque and their "TheSkyX Professional" software package. This is the package that is used by many professional observatories. It allows very high precision pointing and tracking.

At the main f/8 focus behind the primary mirror, there is a mirror beam switching unit and rotator, so the telescope beam can be relayed to the 3 instruments.

These are a large SBIG Imaging CCD Camera with a 7 position filter wheel. A CCSPEC spectrograph and a ZWO HD CMOS Camera. The rotator allows the instrument to be rotated to any angle, so for example the slit of the spectrograph can be aligned along the axis of a galaxy, to measure it's rotation.

The telescope also carries a 5" 127mm Istar f/12 refractor which is useful for planetary observations.