Vaciado

The largest instrument on site and the one most visitors come for. At 610 mm it gathers roughly 7,600 times the light of a dark-adapted eye, which is the difference between knowing Centaurus A has a dust lane and seeing it.

The mount is direct-drive alt-azimuth, so there is no field rotation compensation and no long-exposure imaging from this telescope. That is deliberate. Vaciado is a visual instrument and keeping it visual means it is never tied up for six hours on someone else's data run.

Collimation is checked before every session and re-checked at the midpoint. In practice the primary holds well; the secondary drifts about once a fortnight, usually after a cold night.