Active backplate cooling allows to the telescope to reach thermal equilibrium quick enough to be ready for precise observations early in the evening. An additional three fans located on the side of the tube assembly blow air across the primary mirror to ensure a boundary layer of air is not distorting the wavefront. Open tube assembly reduces the required refocusing intervals to a minimum during the imaging sessions, which provides an observer with efficient observing time.

The telescope provides the full set of Johnson/Bessel photometric UBVRI filters made by Andover Corporation in Salem, NH, USA. The filters are made of Schott glass substrates (ground and polished) laminated with index-matching epoxy and are 5 mm ± 0.1 mm thick. This makes them parfocal, which eliminates refocusing requirement on filter change. The filters are fully coated to MIL-C-48497A standard, with peak transmission specified as following:

The photometric filters offer 1/4-wave propagated wavefront or better, < 0.5 arcminute substrate parallelism.

For imaging purposes, A1 offers the standard color filter set: NIR/UV-blocked Luminance, Red, Green and Blue made by Chroma in Bellows Falls, VT, USA. These filters offer excellent color separation and image rendition and are optimized to reduce star halos and reflections. There is a spectral gap between the green and red filters that allows to reduce the effects of light pollution. The green and the blue filters overlap at the [O III] emission line at 500.7 nm offering correct teal color rendition for the oxygen signal in planetary nebulae.

For narrowband imaging, A1 features Chroma filters with 5 nm bandwidth for H-alpha, [O III] and S II lines with > 97% transmittance. These filters are parfocal with broadband LRGB filter set.