In the news
01 November 2022 · Observatory
Pinnacle Hill Observatory features in a story about life and change at Auckland’s southern edge.
A private window into the southern sky.
Astrophotography, instruments and field notes from 250 metres above Auckland's southern edge.
Explore the observatory
An old rural building was restored by hand and turned into a permanent telescope floor, control room and quiet retreat. Step inside the observatory or follow the twenty-page construction journey.
Equipment and images
See the 10Micron mount, Celestron EdgeHD, wide-field refractor and cooled astronomy cameras in the equipment guide. Then browse nebulae, galaxies, planets and lunar work in the image archive.
Notes from the dome
New gear!
03 December 2021 · Gear
An Orion ED80T CF triplet refractor adds a crisp 480 mm, f/5.6 option for larger deep-sky targets.
Observatory software
12 August 2020 · Control room
The applications behind planning, guiding, sequencing, plate solving and processing a night’s data.
Kronos workstation install
12 July 2020 · Observatory
One workstation replaces two computers and centralises control from both levels of the observatory.
Building a new workstation
07 June 2020 · Workshop
A purpose-built machine brings acquisition, telescope control and image processing under one roof.
Target: M20, the Trifid
15 November 2019 · Observing log
A night at the telescope with Sequence Generator Pro trained on the Trifid Nebula.