This is a picture of the 16" Boller & Chivens Cassegrain telescope that Peter rescued the from a college in Berea, Kentucky. The line of scopes was developed at the dawn of the space age. This particular unit was built in the mid ‘60’s for the University of Washington. In the early ‘70’s it went to Berea College in Kentucky.
It was sitting atop a 4 storey building that was being torn down.
Anyone who was willing to pay for the crane could have the telescope - my hands went up immediately!
I’ve sunk a pile of money into updating the drive system and adapting it to the observatory the Zeiss Coude was to go in. I touched the optics a bit and had the mirrors recoated.
The mount is a monster, but I can literally brace myself on the tube while observing a 600x!