Custer Observatory - The Custer Museum

The Custer Museum

On the second floor of the dome tower is located the Custer Museum. Among the items in the collection, open to viewing by the visiting public, can be found:

• Henry Fitz, early Custer member and famous telescope mirror maker's Grinding Table. (Similar to the one on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.)
• James Short's circa 1750 Gregorian telescope variation designed to read the separation of binary stars. One of only three known to exist.
• Various other 18th and 19th centuries vintage spectrometers and sextants, along with other astronomical devices.
• The Custer Rock Collection including geodes and numerous Fossilized Rocks.
• The Custer Meteorite Collection, which includes a Shergottite from Mars.
• Numerous astronomical, sunspot, and aurora pictures taken by past and present members.
• A broken 1750s roadside Mile Marker, recovered by Custer members that was originally ordered by Ben Franklin when he was the head of the Colonial Mail system.(Today, most of the other markers, still undamaged, mark the distance along the Main Road between Orient Point and the Old Riverhead Court House.)
• The Custer Civil War Bullet Collection.
• A piece of a tree that was originally planted at Bronx College by Albert Einstein (who often summered in Southold).