MnAstro Forums

This week I was digging through some stuff and ran across this MAS Benefits of Membership brochure dating from the early 1990's.
Some differences between then and now:
- Monthly meetings were held at the Science Museum of Minnesota - at their old location at 30 E 10th St, St. Paul!
- Star parties were held at Metcalf Nature Center, Baylor Regional Park and Cherry Grove. Onan Observatory did not yet exist, and Cherry Grove was the - Society's dark sky site (as opposed to now, with Long Lake Conservation Center holding the prize as the observing site with the darkest skies).
- Memberships included a Sky & Telescope subscription in the cost of the annual membership.
- The MAS' largest (and I believe, only) large telescope was the 16 inch Sherman Schultz Reflector at Cherry Grove Observatory. This was a 16" Newtonian reflector on an English equatorial mount. An interesting aspect of this telescope is that, while it was a relatively long focal length Newtonian reflector, the mirror had a Cassegrain-style center hole in it, which made collimation "interesting" to say the least.

SEmert wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 3:40 pm - The MAS' largest (and I believe, only) large telescope was the 16 inch Sherman Schultz Reflector at Cherry Grove Observatory.

The Larson was in MAS possession at that time (according to the page describing the history of Onan Observatory), but did not have a home for use. That was also a 16 inch.

I just noticed that star parties were held at Baylor Park before Onan was built. I guess I never knew this.

FF2Rydia wrote: ↑Mon Mar 09, 2020 7:39 pm The Larson was in MAS possession at that time (according to the page describing the history of Onan Observatory), but did not have a home for use. That was also a 16 inch.

Thanks for the reminder, Kris. I had temporarily forgotten about the Larson scope as it wasn't mentioned in the brochure. Snips from the "About Us/How the Onan Observatory Came About" page:

Through its involvement with programs at the University of Minnesota, the club learned that the astronomy program at the Duluth campus wished to dispose of its primary instrument, a Group 128, 16″ Cassegrain telescope. ... in May 1980 a group removed the telescope from its Duluth location and transported it to the Twin Cities. ... The club disassembled the 1,000 lb. telescope and moved it to storage sites in Burnsville and Forest Lake Minnesota. ... [history of fundraising and building the Onan Observatory] ... The final major accomplishment of 1997 was to relocate the +1,000 lb. telescope mount from storage to the work space where renovation would take place in the months ahead. ... Major construction progress continued in 2000. ... By the end of the year, the telescope was fully operational ... This major milestone marked the end of a 20 year journey for the telescope that began when it was first moved from the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

At times, the Larson telescope was described as "the largest telescope in Minnesota". That may be debated, but I fully believe it was (and still may be) the HEAVIEST scope in Minnesota!

In the continuing search for the few missing Gemini issues, one of the found issues was from October 1992 on Cherry Grove and Sherm Schultz.
http://www.mnastro.org/wp-content/uploa ... 992_10.pdf

I have also been scanning the meeting notes from the very first TCAC meetings. The links to these are at the bottom of the Gemini web page.
http://www.mnastro.org/about-us/newsletter2019/#TCAC

I will be adding the meeting minutes from 1974 and 75 along with other interesting notes and publications from those early years. With that in mind, Steve, would you email me the brochure you have. ALSO, if anyone has other notices, publications or letters for the early 70's on the TCAC, let me know.

Thanks
Merle

I was sorting through some old materials today and ran across these two additional "Blast from the Past" items.

In the early 2000's, the MAS hosted a visit from John Dobson of both Dobsonian style telescope ("Dobson" or simply "Dob") fame and San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers fame. Apparently he had passed out some leaflets. Here is a copy of that leaflet.

Also, in May 2005 the St. Paul paper did an article on the MAS and the Onan Observatory (it wasn't yet called Eagle Lake Observatory as we only had the single Onan Observatory building at the time). We had just recently gotten our first new addition, the Takahashi TOA-130, our first major improvement beyond the original 16" Larson telescope which was depicted in the color picture (and which stood where the 16" Meade LX200 stands today).

The John Dobson leaflet is attached for you to download, but not depicted here.
The St. Paul paper's article showing the Larson telescope and the text and pictures of the second page is attached and depicted.
You should be able to right-click on the article and save it to your PC so you can zoom in and read the text.