October 4, 2002 - On the front page of USA Today, OGS customer [Gary Jaffe] strolls out to his vineyard-encircled observatory, cranks open the motorized dome, directs a computer to aim the telescope at a galaxy far, far away, and settles in for hours of bliss. Learn more>>

January 10, 2002 - "The New CCD Astronomy," by Ron Wodaski, features images taken through OGS R-C telescopes (see pg. 151). 
Learn more>> 

October 15, 2001 - On the cover of the November issue of "S&T," Dr. Robert Gendler uses his Optical Guidance Systems 12.5" R-C to image the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus. more>>http://robgendler.astrodigitals.com

September 10, 2001 - Optical Guidance Systems (OGS) would like to congratulate Susannah C. Lazar for being the NYAA first-place winner! Working with an OGS RC-20" telescope located at Louisiana State University, Lazar was a co-discoverer of two asteroids. more>>www.astroleague.org

August 23, 2001 - WOBURN, Mass. -- Changes in the sun's luminosity may affect the global climate over a timescale of centuries. Scientists attempting to quantify these changes must cope with both a wide spectral range and the extreme spatial variation across the surface of the sun. Now a team at Cambridge Research and Instrumentation Inc. has developed an imager with a flat spectral response over the sun's wavelength range that may help researchers better understand solar variability.
    The solar bolometric imager is built around NightSight, a ferroelectric array from Raytheon Commercial Infrared of Dallas that was developed for defense applications. Incident radiation in the 8- to 14-µm band increases the temperature of barium-strontium-titanate elements in the array. This changes their capacitance, which is interpreted as a thermal image. To convert this sensitivity range to meet solar wavelengths, where 96 percent of the light is between 0.28 and 2.6 µm, the scientists coated the detector with a 30-µm-thick layer of gold black.
   To accurately measure the contribution from small facular structures in the photosphere, they integrated the detector with a Optical Guidance Systems-modified 300-mm, f/12 Dall-Kirkham telescope with uncoated Pyrex mirrors from Takahashi Corp. The resulting system's angular resolution is 2.4 arc sec per pixel, and the diffraction-limited resolution within a 50-µm pixel is 2.1 arc sec at 2.6 µm.
   Custom electronics improved the system's linearity, so that it was able to measure 15-arc-sec structures with a signal-to-noise ratio of 5:1. Some non-linearities were present when the system observed highly non-uniform illumination near the solar limb, but the team expects to reduce this in the next version of the solar bolometric imager. more>>http://www.photonics.com/Spectra/Tech/jul01/techDetector.asp

July 11, 2001 - The Telescope Driver Standard is released! The new ASCOM Platform Setup package is now available in the ASCOM-STANDARDS Downloads section. The Platform Setup kit installs drivers as well as development tools (look for further advances to be made in the near future!).

June 6, 2001 - "I thought that some of you would be interested in seeing an image of M-106 that I took using my new ST-9E CCD camera thru the Kopernik Science Center’s OGS 20-inch R-C with the scope focal reduced to F/4. This picture is based on fifteen 60-second images. The field of view is 16.3 x 16.3 arc minutes with a scale of 1.9 arc seconds per pixel. It would seem that the focal reducer (which was given to me by OGS) works well with this camera and the resolution is quite good. The link is: http://www.kopernik.org/images/archive/m106.htm"
--George Normandin

May 18, 2001 - Astro-imager, Dr. Rob Gendler, authors excellent S&T article on CCD imaging techniques (see S&T July 2001). You can view his astro images at http://robgendler.astrodigitals.com.

April 20, 2001 - Announcing the Summer 2001 Stargazing Programs at the Observatory of Columbia University's Biosphere 2 Center! Sixteen public stargazing evenings will be held throughout the summer and year's end, featuring using the Biosphere 2 Observatory's new Optical Guidance Systems 24-inch R-C Research-class Telescope. (Also, an intensive Columbia University credited summer program in Observational Astronomy for college undergraduates will run from June 4th to July 6th.)

April 1, 2001 - Asteroid Work at the Louisiana State University Highland Road Park Observatory is taken seriously; the program consists of asteroid astrometry and discovery. The Optical Guidance Systems R-C 20" telescope is capable of reaching below 18th magnitude which puts a large portion of the 60,000+ known asteroids within its reach. Asteroid images are made over a period of an hour to several hours. Then the positions are measured to arc-second accuracy and sent to the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard.

March 20, 2001 - Using his OGS R-C12.5", Rob Gendler imaged M94, the beautiful spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici. The exposures were LRGB = 180:20:20:40m, all at F9 with his OGS R-C.

March 1, 2001 - Astro-imager uses his OGS RC12.5" telescope to make cover of March "Sky & Telescope." The spring sky is a galaxy hunter's delight, and one of the finest targets is the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, in Canes Venatici. The CCD image by Oregon amateur Bill McLaughlin shows the main spiral galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, in their full glory. (Pls. see "S&T" March 2001.)

February 14, 2001 - Optical Guidance Systems (OGS), in cooperation with Tenagra Observatories Supernova Search, adopts ASCOM Tools. Tenagra Observatories in Patagonia AZ, has adopted Cyanogen's MaxImDL/CCD controlling an Apogee Instruments AP-7 camera, DC-3 Dreams ACP, DC-3 Dreams PinPoint, and the ASCOM standard driver for COMSOFT's PC-TCS on the OGS RC20" Tenagra III telescope. During the run, the images are automatically plate-solved and prepared for input to the Berkeley Supernova Search project.

February 2, 2001 - As seen in "S&T" Feb. 2001, spiral galaxy NGC 7331, a challenging target for Northern Hemisphere observers, is imaged by skilled astro-imager Rob Gendler. Rob used his OGS RC12.5" telescope in concert with a SBIG ST-8e. (Pls. see issue for detailed image.)

January 14, 2001 - [OGS]

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