First Light!

Here we see the South Mountain Environmental Education Center's Optical Deep Space Imaging Telescope System that Arizona Star Tales was the designer and contractor for ready for the 'First Light' Dedication event on 14 Sept, 2018. Here the system is imaging the Moon in full daylight real time using a Mallincam astronomical video camera. After the dedication when it got dark, we switched to our ZWO Camera with Hyperstar system to take deep sky object images and showed them on a large TV monitor. The event drew a huge crowd with lots of 'OH WOWs' all evening long as new images were displayed. The addition of this system further demonstrates how the South Mountain Environmental Education Center is dedicated to STEM education by continually expanding their offerings using current technologies.