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The item is a 6 inch transit circle. The transit circle is an instrument used to determine the declination of stellar onjects. It consists of a circular scale kept perpendicular to the rotating axis of a telescope tube.

This item was an instrument used in surveying land, alignment, testing, and calibrating optical Instruments. It is basically a refracting telescope. Whose optical elements tilt angles with high accuracy of the order of arcsecs.

This item was a stellar object requires two coordinates to locate it on the sky, as the sky is a two-dimensional plane. One of these coordinates known as declination. This is similar to the two co-ordinates viz. latitude and longitude, defining a point on the surface of the earth. The transit circle is an instrument used to determine the declination of stellar onjects. It consists of a circular scale kept perpendicular to the rotating axis of a telescope tube.

The fond contains Results of observations of the fixed stars made with the Meridian Circle at the Government Observatory , Madras

This item was a optical instrument named as Stereoscope. Stereoscopes are apparently those optical devices that help to view the two images separately and with relaxed eyes. There are two types of stereoscopes as: lens or pocket stereoscopes and mirror stereoscopes. Lens or pocket stereoscopes are great for viewing the whole overlap area of prints up to 9 cm × 13 cm or parts of larger patterns. On the other hand, mirror stereoscopes were designed to accept standard 23 cm × 23 cm metric air photos and work well with A4/US letter-sized prints. Most models come with magnifying options up to eight times, which is pretty impressive. One cool thing about mirror stereoscopes is that they are large enough to allow the analyst to draw beneath them, so it is possible to trace objects identified in the stereoview with a pen onto one of the images or a transparent overlay. However, it's important to remember that this sketch wouldn't have the geometric properties of a map as it contains all distortions present in the base image.

The album contains archival documents related to the building, instruments and observations at the Madras Observatory. It mainly includes an old photo of the Madras Observatory, a photocopy of the first observation taken in 1786 from the observatory, two pictures of Kater's pendulum hung in front of the Haswell clock in the observatory, a sketch of the Madras Observatory building from 1848 Taylor's catalogue and painting of Madras coast by Daniel.

The album includes documents on the results of astronomical observations and photographs related to the Madras Observatory. A copy of the first observation made at the Madras Observatory and a page from Madras M. S. record is preserved with photos of the Madras Observatory, Shelton clock and granite slab with Latin inscription at Madras Observatory. A map of Madras Observatory land in 1826 and a sketch of John Goldingham swinging Kater's pendulum hung in front of Haswell clock in the observatory.

This item was an instrument used for measuring the intensity of a light source. It uses a light-sensing device that is calibrated to express intensity in a standard unit. Some optical elements such as lens etc. are also employed to incerase the sensitivity of the instrument.

These photographic slides contain the images of the spectrometer, and Ondrej telescope related to the Optical Science Department of Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.

These photographic slides contains different images of Mcdonald observatory.