Sky & Telescope

Jerry Persha is the founder and chief engineer at Optec. Jerry began his career in college with DOAA Enterprises which was later incorporated as Optec, Inc Candice is our machine operator and is responsible for running both the CNC turning and mill centers. She is a hard worker and not afraid about getting a little coolant in her hair. Handling 10 pound slugs of raw metal into and out of the machines keeps her lean and mean. Optec, Inc is located in Lowell, Michigan, just east of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. For many years now the company has been in the forefront of research and development of astronomical, visibility, and video/CCD microscopy optical instruments for both amateurs and professional alike. Optec was incorporated in 1979 and is the successor to DOAA Enterprises ; a Detroit based company founded by an Oakland University college student, Gerald Persha. Under the leadership of Persha, Optec has grown from a small basement operation to a corporation employing 7 technicians, machinists, and sales staff. Optec's roots are founded strongly in astronomical research instrumentation with products such as the SSP line of solid-state photometers, photomultiplier tube and CCD photometers, the patented TCFtemperature compensated focuser and the recent addition of the Pyxis 3-inch, a high precision camera field rotator for large telescopes. Optec has a support staff of many diverse and qualified individuals, who take great pride in their accomplishments at the company. Optec maintains and uses the Optec Observatory, a small observatory and testing laboratory for Optec's astronomical product line. Using a Meade 10" LX200 telescope and CCD cameras from SBIG. In addition to the Optec SSP single channel photometer line, the Optec Observatory is fully computer controlled with separate control room and observing deck. Recent additions to the observatory now allow remote operations of the telescope, photometer, and CCD camera control software. In addition to the astronomical product line, Optec designs and manufactures optical couplers for video/CCD microscopy, atmospheric visibility measuring instruments such as the Model LPV transmissometer and the NGN integrating nephelometer. These unique instruments are used to monitor the air quality in many of the national parks in the USA as part of the Improve Network. The telescope at the Observatory is a Meade 10-inch LX-200, mounted on a special heavy-duty wedge manufactured by Optec. The pier for the telescope is pyramid shaped, and was constructed using 45 bags of concrete mixed by hand on site. The telescope is exclusively used for equipment testing and electronic observations, and is only used visually for collimation and finder adjustment.

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