November Meeting

The Revival of the 1965 Princeton Boller and Chivens 36” Telescope

This talk will present some of the recent work going into the revival effort by several Antique Telescope Society members of the Boller and Chivens 36 inch telescope made for Princeton University in 1965.  The telescope was last used in 2002 for the targeted optical SETI program in collaboration with the 61 inch Fecker telescope at Harvard’s oak ridge observatory. The disassembly and rigging coincided with the 75th anniversary of Orson Wells war of the world broadcast, where they mention the “Princeton observatory”.  The FitzRandolph observatory was built for a 23 inch Clark refractor, installed in 1882 and the 36 inch replaced it in 1965.  Pictures of the disassembly in preparation for the riggers will be shown, and some plans for the new Newtonian optical configuration and custom observatory building in New Mexico will be shown.

Alan Sliski is an inventor with 28 patents. He is an expert in new and old-school electronic, medical, mechanical, and optical research & development. Some of Alan’s major interests are novel radiation therapy system design, precision measuring systems for the physical sciences, analog electronics, servo systems, magnetics, electron optics, high vacuum and light optics. He is very interested in engineering new astronomical projects and restoring antique telescopes and is a very active member of the Antique Telescope Society and the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston.