1. An Idea!

The seeds of Project Cyclops were sown during our annual star party in July 1994, held to celebrate the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter. We had decided to hold 'The End of the World' Barbecue at the Vet School. A few CAA members along with the audio-visual technician from the Vet School had the brilliant idea that the live image of Jupiter could be shown on a large screen. This involved linking Rod's 17 inch Dobsonian, set on a Poncet platform, with a video camera borrowed from a microscope in a nearby lab. This, in turn, was linked up to a borrowed video projector. With lots of electrician's tape and improvisation an image was obtained just before everyone arrived. Jupiter was low down in the not quite dark western sky and there, for everyone to see, was a wobbly image of Jupiter with two lovely black eyes set against a dark blue sky. For the 90 people who came, there were superb views of the two impact sites, with no need to queue at a telescope eyepiece.

2. Early Days

The same set up was used for the September Star Party and for the Occultation of Spica in May 1995. This showed how everyone could witness an event that was only visible for a very short time. The alternative would have been to give every one a telescope. Big Screen astronomy was becoming a regular feature at the Vet School and at CAA events. As well as working well at the Star Parties, two bright comets - Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp were shown on the Big Screen. The Institute of Astronomy asked us to set up for Comet Hale-Bopp for their open day. We were very happy to do so and could not believe our luck with the clear skies that evening. Over 800 people came to the Open Day, with between 200 - 300 people watching the Big Screen at peak times. The spiral structure could be seen around the comet's nucleus - it was a brilliant evening.

It also demonstrated that we could cope with large crowds. The Institute had had a difficult experience when the 'Look East ' programme had encouraged people to come and observe through a telescope for a particular event. The response was tremendous; but trying to manage a queue of 800 people, all wanting their turn to climb up the observing steps of the Northumberland Telescope, sit in the chair, look through the eye piece, say 'wow' and then come back down again, was a challenge to say the least. There simply wasn't time in one evening for everyone to have a go.

3. Project Cyclops comes to life.

By September 1997, the Star Party had moved to the Institute, and it was at this event that the set up was named Project Cyclops. We had completed a 14 inch Dobsonian Reflector on a Poncet platform with two CCTV cameras mounted on the tube. By rotating the Newtonian flat through 180 it was possible to change from one camera to the other. The main problem was that Project Cyclops had been built on a very small budget. Lots of equipment had been begged, borrowed or 'stolen'. A local company had donated the cameras and the maximum exposure time was 1/30 second. This gave us a limiting magnitude of 8 to 9. We couldn't use CCD equipment because the tracking on the Poncet platform was not good enough. While a static CCD image might impress astronomers, live images suited the public shows better. Certainly, a shimmering image of the moon with some light cloud scudding across proved highly poplar compared with a CCD image. With apologies to all amateurs who take such good astro images, we might just as well be showing a slide show. To help Project Cyclops a wide angle lens was added to give live images of objects such as the Pleiades.

4. Recent Developments

With better video cameras, we decided in 2002 to buy an 8 inch Meade GoTo SCR and retire the 14inch Dobsonian - it was a little on the heavy side, someone called it a bit agricultural. For the start of the 2003 observing season, the Institute purchased a 14 inch Meade GoTo SCR. Was this a case of Project Cyclops going binocular? The transformation was amazing. Instead of struggling to find half a dozen objects within the range of the 14 inch Dobsonian, we can now find anything - the sky is the limit.

5. The Set Up (a typical evening.)

8 inch Meade SCT on a pier mount with a Watec monochrome Deep Sky video camera attached. This can be integrated for up to 10 seconds and sees slightly fainter objects than the naked eye through the same telescope.

Objects observed: clusters, nebulae, galaxies, minor planets, and the moons of planets.

14 inch Meade SCT on a pier mount with a Toucan Colour Webcam attached. Longest exposure time is 1/30 second. Objects observed: brighter stars, brighter planets, moon, double stars and the space station.

Wide angle lens on another Watec video camera set up on a tripod with a choice of lens, including some zoom. Objects observed: whole constellations, larger star clusters, galaxies, Milky Way and satellites.

20 inch Three Mirror Telescope (3MT) with a monochrome CCD. This gives deep sky images to 17th magnitude and beyond, such as a recent supernova in a distant galaxy.

The two video cameras feed to an old but good video projector. The Webcam and 3MT feed to a data projector. The two projectors throw images onto two 7 x 5 feet screens beside each other.