Shared Skies Star Dome and Lili Garden at Moore Observatory
Our Star Dome is named in remembrance of a wonderful mare who lived most of her life at Hidden Hollow Orchard in nearby Pewee Valley, Kentucky. Her companion in retirement was Lili of Seabrook Valley who came to Kentucky from Virginia. In their youth, Star and Lili taught young and old riders about horses and life, and their telescope is here to teach everyone about the sky. The surrounding lilly garden blooms in the spring.
The telescope seen here is a Takahshi TOA-150 apochromat, an extremely fine refracting telescope that we used in the dome from 2021 to 2025. Recently we installed a Takahshi FSQ-106ED on a Paramount for a wider field of view and smaller presence better suited for students and visitors to use.
The Paramount currently in the Star dome was manufactured by Software Bisque. It has been modified to use a Sidereal Technologies telescope drive system simplify maintenance. While excellent for digital imaging and capable of handling larger telescopes should the need arise, the Paramount is easy to use for visual observing with the FSQ in the limited space of the dome.
The Takahashi FSQ-106ED is a flat-field super Petzval quadruplet astrograph with 2 "ED" low-dispersion elements for high order color correction. It has an effective aperture of 106 mm and an f/5 focal length of 530 mm, and resolves 1.1 seconds of arc over an 88 mm diameter image field. At low magnification provides stunning 4-degree views of star clusters, nebulae and galaxies to visual observers. At higher magnification, its optical quality delivers "sense of presence" at the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus. A safe full-aperture solar filter is used for similar daytime viewing of the Sun and its spots.