Refractor Telescopes

The Luven radio station seems to have had two refractor telescopes in their possession. One has a 4.25 inch (108 mm) objective the other a 5 inch (125 mm) objective. Exactly what the Luven station used the telescopes for I am not sure. It could have been for satellite tracking in the 1960's and 1970's, it could also have been for monitoring sunspot numbers as part of an ionospheric propagation study, it could have been both.

The TE20 was manufactured in Japan by Royal Astro Optical Industries Co., Ltd. as their Model R-102 (Figure 1). Its objective lens was supplied by Horiguchi Optical Company.

The telescope was manufactured in the 1960's -1970's, and was marketed by Tasco as their model #20TE. Tasco was established in 1954 as Tanross Supply Co. by George Rosenfield. This Tasco 20TE telescope is no relation of modern (low quality in comparison) Tasco telescopes, it is a quality instrument with built-in sidereal drive. It has all its accessories as listed in the Royal Astro Optical Co, brochure. It even has the Sun projection screen.

Tasco 20TE manual.

Here is a pdf version of the Tasco 20TE manual. If you want to download the manual (10 Mb) press the pop-out arrow in the top right-hand corner of the manual's cover page.