All good quality telescopes are rated by aperture which is the diameter of the optical tube and in the case of this telescope the mirror that collects the light. The aperture of this telescope is 305mm or 12inches which gives this instrument the capacity to collect approximately 1900 times more light than the human eye. This powerful ‘light grasp’ is great for observing deep sky objects like nebula and distant galaxies where we are able to get bright and detailed images.
This telescope is also quite tall standing at just under 1.6 metres in height. This is a comfortable height for most adults to look through although we do have a ladder for smaller people to safely stand on.
Dobsonian telescopes were created by John Dobson in the 1960’s. A Dobsonian telescope is a Newtonian Reflector as invented by Sir Isaac Newton in 1668 which is then mounted on a wooden rotating frame that gives horizontal and vertical movement. Usually a Dobsonian telescope is aimed using ‘push to’ by hand although our Dobsonian is has motors to direct it towards objects in the sky.
Our 12 inch telescope is a Sky-Watcher Goto Flextube 300P which is motorised with Freedom-Find Dual Encoder Technology which contains nearly 43,000 objects and additionally can be remotely controlled using planetarium software. This telescope has the ability to find and track deep sky objects with an impressive degree of accuracy and was supplied to us by the very good people at Telescopes New Zealand who are based in Warkworth.
To see video of our 12 inch Dobsonian telescope powered up and working please see the reel on our Facebook page here
Hamurana Skies offers guided astronomy tours and accommodation for experienced astronomy enthusiast twenty minutes north of Rotorua. Book your astronomy experience here
