That's a B-I-G Telescope!

Well, it is the first day of the Antique Telescope Society meeting, and we finished up by getting to observe with the 26-inch Alvan Clark refractor at the Leander McCormick Observatory at the University of Virginia. It is a beautiful instrument - built around 1819, and at the time was one of the largest telescopes in the world. 26 inches, by the way, is the diameter of the glass objective (or lens) of the telescope. The telescope is about 10 meters in length. Notice how it dwarfs the observer in the lower left corner of the photograph. Like I said, a BIG telescope. We got to observe a globular cluster - M15, and the planet Jupiter, which was stunning in this large instrument. What a great way to start off the conference and we were really lucky that it is not cloudy.