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A couple of weeks ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marswalker took us up to Mount Wilson to walk around the observatories.
Most of them are closed to the public, but there is an observation room for the Hooker.
This is the 100 inch telescope. It was built in 1917. This is the one that Hubble did his research about the size of the universe. It now has adaptive optics. The mirror is flexible and controlled by a computer so that it can adjust for atmospheric turbulence. This kind of thing amazes me.
This is where they house the 60 inch telescope.
It was built by George Hale in 1908, and also saw a lot of groundbreaking research. It is not currently in use, and is open to the public. You can use it for half a night, for $450.
This small telescope is S2 of the CHARA array.
From the site: The flagship project of Georgia State University's Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) is its optical/interferometric array of six telescopes located on Mount Wilson. Each telescope of the CHARA Array has a light-collecting mirror 1-meter in diameter. The telescopes are dispersed over the mountain to provide a two-dimensional layout that provides the resolving capability (but not the light collecting ability!) of a single telescope a fifth of a mile in diameter. Light from the individual telescopes is conveyed through vacuum tubes to a central Beam Synthesis Facility in which the six beams are combined together. When the paths of the individual beams are matched to an accuracy of less than one micron, after the light traverses distances of hundreds of meters, the Array then acts like a single coherent telescope for the purposes of achieving exceptionally high angular resolution. When fully operational, the Array will be capable of resolving details as small as 200 micro-arcseconds, equivalent to the angular size of a nickel seen from a distance of 10,000 miles (over 100 times the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope). In terms of the number and size of its individual telescopes, its ability to operate at visible and near infrared wavelengths, and its longest baselines of 350 meters, the CHARA Array is arguably the most powerful instrument of its kind in the world.
This is Mike's own telescope from his garage.
He showed us several interesting astronomical entities, including a ring nebula and a binary star. I wish I could tell you more about his telescope, but I didn't think of the questions until after I got home.
marswalker took us up to Mount Wilson to walk around the observatories. Most of them are closed to the public, but there is an observation room for the Hooker.
This is the 100 inch telescope. It was built in 1917. This is the one that Hubble did his research about the size of the universe. It now has adaptive optics. The mirror is flexible and controlled by a computer so that it can adjust for atmospheric turbulence. This kind of thing amazes me.
This is where they house the 60 inch telescope.
It was built by George Hale in 1908, and also saw a lot of groundbreaking research. It is not currently in use, and is open to the public. You can use it for half a night, for $450.
This small telescope is S2 of the CHARA array.
From the site: The flagship project of Georgia State University's Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) is its optical/interferometric array of six telescopes located on Mount Wilson. Each telescope of the CHARA Array has a light-collecting mirror 1-meter in diameter. The telescopes are dispersed over the mountain to provide a two-dimensional layout that provides the resolving capability (but not the light collecting ability!) of a single telescope a fifth of a mile in diameter. Light from the individual telescopes is conveyed through vacuum tubes to a central Beam Synthesis Facility in which the six beams are combined together. When the paths of the individual beams are matched to an accuracy of less than one micron, after the light traverses distances of hundreds of meters, the Array then acts like a single coherent telescope for the purposes of achieving exceptionally high angular resolution. When fully operational, the Array will be capable of resolving details as small as 200 micro-arcseconds, equivalent to the angular size of a nickel seen from a distance of 10,000 miles (over 100 times the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope). In terms of the number and size of its individual telescopes, its ability to operate at visible and near infrared wavelengths, and its longest baselines of 350 meters, the CHARA Array is arguably the most powerful instrument of its kind in the world.
This is Mike's own telescope from his garage.
He showed us several interesting astronomical entities, including a ring nebula and a binary star. I wish I could tell you more about his telescope, but I didn't think of the questions until after I got home.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-22 09:44 pm (UTC)From:I like it when you and Cyn send separate accounts of something as you choose different things to accentuate.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 06:25 am (UTC)From:http://www.livejournal.com/users/low_delta/952258.html?nc=3
But I'm not real good with the personal stuff.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 03:19 pm (UTC)From:Oh hush
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 08:14 pm (UTC)From:Feel free to ask any questions about my 'scope you might have.
The basics of it are: It's a hand-made telescope, a Coulter Odyssey II, Newtonian design, with a 17 inch diamter main mirror. The mirror was hand-figgured and polished to within "one 16th-lambda" meaning that it distorts light less than one-16th of a wavelength of visible light - pretty remarkable for a hand-figured glass! The focusing mount is a rack-and-pinon mount, built for 2" eye pieces (with an insert for 1.25" eye pieces). It is aimed with a "Telrad" reflex heads-up sighting system - there's a small window you look through, onto which a "bulls-eye" like target is projected. You can see the sky through the window, and you just line-up the thing you want to see in the middle of the bulls-eye.
The mounting is a "Dobsonian" mount, meaning it's an alt-az mount (up-down, and left-right), and there are no motors so it's completely manually guided.
Under dark skies, i've managed to see over 90 of the Messier Objects in one night, including many galaxies in the Virgo cluster that are not in the Messier listings.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 11:33 pm (UTC)From:I think you covered it pretty well. It's funny how I tend not to ask questions when I'm with someone.