The Alvan Clark 20"

This is the 20" Alvan Clark great refractor in the dome at the Van Vleck observatory, at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut. It was installed there in 1920, on a Warner and Swasey mount. I was at Wesleyan all day for StarConn 2009, an astronomy conference. When the evening program was over, we go to go to the observatory and look through this historic instrument at the planet Saturn. The view was stunning. The telescope is almost 28 feet long. When observing, the dome is dimly lit by red lights, so our eyes can become accustomed to the dark - so many objects in the telescope are faint and we need to make sure we don't loose our "night vision." This is a really long exposure - the dome in real life is very dark - but if I didn't make a long exposure, you wouldn't be able to see anything.