The university wants to revive the old observatory and I have made a grant proposal to the Louisiana Board of Regents to fund this effort. The grant is still pending. This is a current photo of the exterior of the observatory facing west towards Simsboro:
We examined several site possibilities. The original site (shown above) is just west of Grambling on the old prisoner of war camp site halfway between Grambling and Simsboro.
The light pollution map shows this area as yellow (about where the I20 shield is left of center on the light pollution map above). There is a fiber board plant just to the west of the site which runs 24 hours a day. There are better sites towards Vernon and Chatham, but there is no property owned by the university in that area and we are concerned about easy access. Keeping the old site seems the best compromise at this point. Future plans may include a dark sky site if we get good results from the rebuilt telescope and can justify such an effort. Despite the proximity to Grambling and Simsboro the site has decent 5th to 5.5th magnitude skies except to the south east and directly west over the plant.
The observatory telescope had Cave 12.5 inch f7 optics. Here is a photo of what the telescope would have looked like if it hab been bought as a finished telescope from Cave. The woman gives a sense of scale. Actually the telescope was homebuilt around the commercial optics and I have no pictures of the LA Tech design -- a Springfield mount. I will remedy that as I build these pages.
Right now we have a portable telescope -- a Celestron 9.25 inch f10 on a computerized CGE mount -- that we use for public observations. I have a photo of the Celestron and my own scope -- a Synta 4.7 inch refractor on a Meade LXD55 mount -- at Poverty Point after a night of observing with the Delta Community College astronomy club.
