The Wheaton Telescope is a fully internet remote controlled telescope, housed in Grove Creek's remote controlled western sliding-roof observatory, 30 meters (100 feet) west of the main domed observatory. It is a research and educational facility run as a joint collaboration between Wheaton College in Norton, MA, USA, Andrew Mattingly and the Grove Creek Observatory in New South Wales, Australia.

History:

After meeting with Professor Tim Barker of Wheaton College, during his visit to Grove Creek in October 2003, a 30.5cm (12") Meade LX-200 (Classic Model) Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope, SBIG ST-8XE CCD camera and accessories were shipped to Australia and installed on the 20th of January, 2004. Within 6 months, the upgrades to make the existing observatory fully remote controlled were completed and the project became fully operational on July 1st, 2004. The 12" LX-200 was initially run only as a "test bed" to design and build a totally unique and user-friendly remote internet observatory for Wheaton College students. However, the results went far beyond expectations and was very popular among the students and the facility, during its 2.5 year operation. The facility provided a valuable research tool and real opportunity to do astronomical research - not only for under-graduates but thesis and independent study work, which was carried out with the project. Wheaton College supplied the telescope, SBIG ST-8XE CCD imaging camera and accessories, as well as jointly funding the ongoing maintenance costs and expenses of the project. In September 2006, it was decided to decommission the 12" LX-200 due to the lack of available repair parts, after running the telescope full time for over 17,470 hours non-stop (and several blown motors and motherboards).

Funding was then made available by Wheaton College to upgrade the facility to a sophisticated and larger Meade 14" (35.5cm) RCX-400 telescope. These are Ritchey-Chrétien optical designs, providing flat images to the edge of the field of view with a focal ratio of f/8 and have far superior optics than the previous Schmidt Cassegrain models. They also include many more electronic features, that were unavailable in previous models and some new interface programming was required to bring the telescope online for full remote operation. To compliment this new telescope, a SBIG STL-1001E large format CCD Camera with 2" BVR filters were purchased for it and the new telescope was installed at Grove Creek on the 29th of January, 2007. However, the telescope was only operational for 6 months before an encoder motor broke and as of May, 2008, the telescope is still in the shop awaiting parts from Meade... In the mean time, a privately owned 10" Meade LX-200 GPS model is being use at f/10, which provides a similar image scale (pixel ratio) as the RCX-400 14" @f/8.

The entire remote control operation was designed and programmed by Andrew Mattingly, Project Manager of the Wheaton remote controlled telescope. He is a leader in this field - with many years of computer experience, holding a high position at IBM Australia and has extensive programming knowledge of telescope and CCD imaging scripting software. Mr. Mattingly jointly funds the ongoing funding of the maintenance costs and expenses of the project with Wheaton College. He also donated the cost of motorising Grove Creek's existing western sliding roof observatory, control electronics, computer software integration, the Telescope Control Computer and the wireless weather station. He also operates the Sydney Web Server - where users log in via the internet to operate the telescope.

The observatory building, video cameras and some of the computer systems and accessories were provided by the Grove Creek Observatory, a non-profit facility, which is run by Observatory Director, Jim Lynch and Managing Astronomer, Steven Williams. Online computer video surveillance security and 4 security cameras were donated and installed by Jeff Brooks from "CrimeWatch Digital Security Solutions". Other computer hardware and accessories donated to the project by individual Grove Creek staff. The project is maintained by Grove Creek Observatory's volunteer staff "at cost" - for the enjoyment of providing a service to Wheaton students, who are in the Northern Hemisphere, that do not have access to the Southern Sky.

The new Wheaton Internet Telescope & CCD Camera
A 36cm (14") f/8 Meade RCX-400 Ritchey-Chrétien
(Currently in the repair shop - using a 10" LX-200GPS for the mean time)