Space Place at Carter Observatory

The Thomas Cooke telescope

The Thomas Cooke telescope is the main telescope in regular use at Space Place. It was manufactured in 1867 in York, England by T. Cooke & Sons, and originally installed at an observatory near Halifax, West Yorkshire.[5] The astronomers Edward Crossley and Joseph Gledhill used the telescope over the course of several decades for their astronomical research.

In 1879, a clock drive was provided by the Grubb Telescope Company,[6] and this still serves as the telescope's mechanical tracking system. The telescope’s original lens was a 91⁄3-inch achromat, which was replaced with a 9-inch Cooke photovisual objective in 1896. In 1896 or 1905, a 5-inch W. Watson & Sons guide scope was added alongside the main scope.

After Crossley’s death in 1905, the telescope was purchased by Reverend Dr David Kennedy and shipped to New Zealand, where it was installed at the Meeanee Observatory at the Marist Seminary near Napier. Kennedy used the telescope to take photographs of Halley’s Comet during its 1910 approach.[7]

The Wellington City Council purchased the telescope for £2000 in 1923, and the telescope was shipped from Napier to Wellington. It was later transferred to the care of the Carter Observatory under the Carter Observatory Act (1938).

At the Carter Observatory site, the Cooke telescope was used for solar astronomy research as well as flare star and double star monitoring programs over the following decades. In April 1968, Carter Observatory was one of the observatories involved in recording an occultation of Neptune by the Moon. This was part of an international project in which U.S. Naval Observatory astronomers used photometric and visual data provided by New Zealand, Australian and Japanese observers to derive an improved value for the diameter of Neptune.

Due to degradation of the lens over its one hundred years of use, the photovisual objective was replaced in December 2001 with a 93⁄4-inch aplanatic objective.

The Ruth Crisp telescope

The Ruth Crisp telescope, a 16-inch Cassegrain reflector manufactured by Boller and Chivens, was donated to the Observatory in 1968 by New Zealand writer and philanthropist Ruth Crisp. Once used for research at the Carter Observatory's outstation at Black Birch in the South Island, this telescope was later moved to the main premises in Wellington.

A grant from Pub Charity allowed improvements to the installation in December 2005: the Observatory had the dome motorised, and the telescope’s primary and secondary mirrors were re-aluminised.

The Golden Bay Planetarium was incorporated into Carter Observatory in 1991, with the Wellington Planetarium Society gifting their Zeiss planetarium to the Observatory Board.

A Sky-Skan digital fulldome planetarium system was installed during a refurbishment of the site in 2010. The nine-metre planetarium seats 66 people, and is equipped with DigitalSky software running across six 4K projectors.

The nearby Thomas King Observatory is also managed by Space Place, and was last refurbished in May 2001. It housed a 5-inch Grubb telescope (manufactured in 1886), and this was used for both night observations as well as solar viewing through a hydrogen-alpha filter.