W&B Observatory, Home ACCEPTED OFFER

This advertisement is a heads-up that the well-known W&B Observatory of the late Dr. Warren B. Offutt will soon be listed for sale by a local realtor in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.  The facility was developed circa 1990 with a spacious two-story home including about 28 lots at the top of the Pineywoods subdivision near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.   The telescope is a 24-inch Ritchey-Chretien reflector built by Dr. Ron Hilliard of Optomechanics Research in Vail, Arizona.  The professionally designed two-story observatory is at an elevation of 8115 feet (2473 meters) and features an 18 1/2-foot Ash dome with Ash's wide-shutter option and a hydraulic lower shutter control.  The mid-level control room is electrically heated and includes a window view to the thermally segregated higher observing floor.  A spacious ground-level storage area is under the observing level.  The facility was designed for research and was constructed to the most professional standards. 

The listing and sale of the property will proceed after an appraisal, but as currently anticipated, the asking price will be near $500,000.  Additional details and clarifications, for example regarding the home and acreage, will be added here as the information becomes available.  More immediately available are details of the instrumentation and its capabilities.

The 24-inch R-C telescope is mounted on a one-armed asymmetric fork and is capable of carrying heavy Cassegrain payloads.  The instrument includes interchangeable secondary mirrors for f/7.5 or f/13.5 effective focal ratios.  The Pyrex optics were supplied by Don Loomis of Tucson.  The system also includes a two-element flat-field corrector and a 4x5-inch format plate camera.  The 24-inch sidereal worm and worm-wheel were made by Edward R. Byers of Barstow.  The motion control is via COMSOFT TCS software designed by David Harvey of University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and moves the telescope using microstepped stepper motors.  The principle guide telescope is a 7-inch refractor by Astro-Physics, and a supplemental finder is a Celestron 8.  The Cassegrain focus includes provision for mounting and rotating instruments to any position angle.  Complete and meticulous documentation and maintenance records are available for the telescope.  The currently mounted CCD by Photometrics is not expected to be included in the sale.  The optics have never been removed from the telescope for aluminization. 

The Google Earth coordinates of the facility are N 32 57 20.91, W 105 46 18.19, and the site abuts the Lincoln National Forest.  Many astronomers have lived in the Pineywoods subdivision including at least three staff members of nearby Apache Point Observatory.  Using W&B Observatory, Dr. Offutt was especially noted for astrometric studies of Kuiper belt objects, and in recognition of his work, Offutt was the recipient of the 1999 Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.  (See further history on Wikipedia.)  The very active observatory community of Mayhill, New Mexico, is a short drive to the east but at a significantly lower altitude.  The W&B Observatory site was selected to facilite good seeing given the typical free flow of relatively undisturbed air from the Tularosa Valley to the west.  In the 1990s, the site was the only amateur observatory in the world producing astrometry of extremely faint Kuiper belt objects.  The permanent observatory code for the site issued by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center is 709.

Additional details of the sale will be posted here as they become available.  Technical details of the site, telescope, and observatory are available from AstroMart account holder John W. Briggs, a friend and former neighbor of the Offutt family.