The project made possible by the donation of this research grade telescope by Arete Associates Inc, the generous donations to the organization by TAAA members, the public interested in our mission, and the manufacturer of the telescope DFM Engineering Inc of Longmont, CO. The DFM company produces instruments used at professional observatories and universities worldwide.
In 2023 TAAA received the donation of a .8 meter DFM research grade telescope at its site in Colorado. The telescope was disassembled by volunteers with the help of DFM and the Melsheimer family, loaded into trucks and transported to Arizona. It was stored awaiting design and construction of an observatory to house it. The assembly of the telescope in its observatory at CAC was been completed by a TAAA team of volunteers in October 2025.
This instrument was one of three originally funded by a National Science Foundation grant through the Small Business Innovation Research program. The telescope tested servo motor controls of telescopes. It also introduced the DFM Engineering Inc. thin mirror line of telescopes in this .8 meter size. These telescopes have a primary mirror pneumatically supported by unique air bags. The mirror is 32” with 1.60” constant thickness. They also have their focus at the secondary mirror, thermally stabilized by invar rods. This classical Cassegrain has an f/3.11 primary mirror and an effective focal ratio of f/13. The mirror was produced by Paul Jones Star Instruments of Irvine, CA. Its mount has a 30 inch diameter friction drive in RA and a 28 inch diameter friction drive in DEC. The telescope was designed to be able to carry instrument payloads of up to 220 pounds with its mirror cell having multiple 12 bolt patterns in the KPNO standard. DFM has a specialty in design of telescopes to perform satellite tracking. Once fully commissioned it is designed to have pointing accuracy better than 30 arc seconds. It will slew 4 degrees per second. It uses the DFM Telescope Control System (TCS) utilizing Renishaw absolute encoders. It is quite impressive to watch such a large instrument move so accurately and gracefully.
Its other two sister telescopes are at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC and at the Schrorringen Telescope Science Institute observatory in east of Cologne in Germany. These sister telescopes are used both for research and for training young scientists. With their long focal lengths these two telescopes are dedicated to three primary areas – high resolution astro-imaging, eclipsing binary research and spectroscopy.
The telescope is housed in a 18 x 24’ roll off roof observatory at the eastern side of the Chiricahua Astronomy Complex. The telescope was originally housed in a roll – off roof observatory in Niwot, CO and then sold to Arete Associates in Longmont, CO. As these first locations were at 40 degrees latitude, the telescope is now on a pier inclined 8 degrees at is home in Arizona at 32 degrees latitude.