00:00I'd like to tell you a bit about the telescope.
00:02Hello my name is Steve Binns, Communications Officer, Sherwood Observatory.
00:06What you're looking at now is the telescope which was built by our founder members.
00:11First light of this was 1983 and that was viewing the Orion Nebula.
00:18The scope was built by our founder members and it took a long while for it to
00:25obviously be completed because of the structure of it.
00:28We've got a 24-inch mirror which leads to a secondary mirror and then to the lens.
00:34The light comes through the aperture, it hits the main mirror and then it rebounds
00:39to the secondary mirror and then you can see whatever's in the lens through the lens there.
00:46We've had a new mirror last year.
00:49First light of that was also the Orion Nebula.
00:52So we've come full circle from 1983 to 2023 and both first lights was the Orion Nebula.
01:00Hello, welcome to Sherwood Observatory's lecture room.
01:03You can see here this has got seating capacity for nearly 50 people.
01:08Every month we have a lecturer who comes here and gives us a lecture about all aspects of astronomy.
01:15We have approximately 3,000 visitors per annum.
01:19This includes the scouting movement, the girl guides and all other movements within that range.
01:26They come here to get their badges and they love it.
01:31We've even had children who's gone on to do science as a career
01:35and even astronomy at university as a career.
01:38So hopefully we're hoping to get more children through like that.
01:43When the Science Discovery Centre opens,
01:45we hopefully will have a turnover of 20,000 people per annum.
01:50We will have a show rota including the planets, SETI, the solar system and lots of other shows.
01:59These will be on during the day and at night.
02:02So there'll be a cafeteria there and hopefully people will be engaged into astronomy
02:08and hopefully do this as a science career for their future.
02:13Okay as you can see I'm standing on the telescope pad now.
02:16We have telescopes here for solar days during the day which look at the sun safely
02:21and on our open evenings we have telescopes to view the night sky.
02:25Behind me you can see our dome where the 24-inch scope is based.
02:29We can look through at galaxies and aurora with that.
02:34Behind me more to my right you can see radio antennae.
02:40The one on the right is SuperSID.
02:42The one in the middle is for Jupiter and Io system.
02:46We can hear the sounds coming from space.
02:50The ones on the very tall platform, they are meteor detection aerials.
02:55If any meteors go above, they're based at France and Belgium,
03:00they send the information to us and we can download that information
03:04on our computer systems in the Radio Astronomy Centre which is up and running up there.
03:10To my right.
03:12So all in all we've got a good selection.
03:14We've got solar scopes, night viewing and we've got radio astronomy as well.
03:19So that's what Sherwood Observatory is all about.
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