University of Western Ontario

Whilst collecting interviews for the Jodcast (the twice-monthly astronomy podcast from Jodrell Bank, available from www.jodcast.net) at the University of Western Ontario in London, I was treated to a tour of the Cronyn Observatory on site. It's not a large observatory or a particularly unique one, but it does warrant a mention on here.

London, ON

The observatory runs public viewing nights every Saturday evening from May to August, sometimes with talks from astronomers and a chance to view various objects through telescopes. From the telescope's website:

It currently houses three telescopes on the same mounting: the original 25 cm refractor and small Schmidt camera as well as 30 cm reflector. When it was built by the Perkin-Elmer Corporation of New York, this refractor was the largest ever built in the western hemisphere.

Pictures of this can be found at the above gallery, along with my personal favourite, the sundial positioned outside which is surprisingly accurate!

My thanks must go to Alex De Souza for giving us the tour, and also to Jodi Guthrie who organised all of the interviews with tremendous effort and goodwill.