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The largest telescopes in the world
In article
, Richard DeLuca wrote: ARRGH!! 20th Century. Gonna take a nap now........ Gosh, Would you believe I'm doing some public speaking tonight? True, but sad.....:-( |
#12
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The largest telescopes in the world
"Mike Simmons" wrote in message snip As with the Sky and Telescope article, it would be interesting to separate telescopes by design as well. The 40-inch refractor remains the world's largest of its kind despite being well over a century old. Surely that deserves some special recognition! :-) Along the same line of thought, I'd think that there should be a catagory for single mirrors. The Keck is 10 meters but made up of smaller hexagonal segments. In 1999, the Subaru telescope had the largest (8.2 meter) single mirror. -- terry 19.52°N, 155.92°W |
#13
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The largest telescopes in the world
Richard DeLuca wrote:
In article , Chris L Peterson wrote: Fun project. I assume your interest here is in _astronomical_ telescopes? I only ask this because I doubt that Galileo's telescope was the largest telescope in the world at the time, although it was certainly the first that we know to have been used as a truly astronomical instrument. This raises the interesting question of whether there have been any non-astronomical telescopes since that time that were actually the largest telescopes in the world. ________________________________________________ _ Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com Chris, I remember a very interesting article in Sky & Tel several years ago. It was about a lens or mirror, touted as the world's largest, that was displayed or possibly even mounted at about the turn of the 19th century. Either a World's Fair or possibly the Colombian Exposition? Anyone recall the details?? Starry Skies, Rich I recall a lens larger than the Yerkes 40 inch that was displayed at an exhibition in Europe (Paris?) but not mounted. Ah ha ... google rules! http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ing_telescopes |
#14
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The largest telescopes in the world
"Paul Schlyter" wrote in
message ... Currently, the list looks as below. By a curious coincidence Lord Rosse's 72-inch Leviathan was dismantled in 1908, the same year that Mount Wilson's 60-inch reflector became operational; I visited the Science Museum while I was in London (just got back tonight!) - And they have the original 72-inch mirror from the Leviathan telescope on display. If I recall correctly, the text which accompanied it said that the Leviathan telescope was the largest in the world until the Mount Wilson 100" telescope in 1917. The Leviathan telescope was built in 1842, and was the largest for 75 years (i.e. until 1917 when the Mount Wilson 100" came along) Although this page: http://www.lawrencetown.com/birr.htm claims the Leviathan was dismantled in 1914 - So I don't know who's telling the truth! If the '75 year' claim for the Leviathan is accurate, then that eliminates the Mt Wilson 60-inch from the list. Perhaps the Leviathan existed up until 1914, but ceased being functional/operational in 1908 - when it fell into disrepair? John. http://www.irishastronomy.com |
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The largest telescopes in the world
Paul Schlyter wrote in message ...
================================================== ============ World's largest Aperture Scope scope in 1908-1917 1.5 m 60-inch, Mt Wilson, California, USA; operational 20 Dec 1917-1948 2.5 m Hooker 100-inch, Mt Wilson, California, USA Between the commissioning of the 60 and 100 inch telescopes on Mount Wilson, the 72inch Plaskett telescope at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, British Columbia was commissioned for the first time in early 1917 I believe (final configuration in 1918). Being built at essentially the same time as the Hooker, it is debatable (depending on what you accept as the completion date of the two telescopes) whether it was ever the world's largest telescope. But the DAO staff insist it was for a few months, as it did beat the Hooker to first light. |
#16
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The largest telescopes in the world
Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 21:58:29 +0200, Paul Schlyter wrote: The world's largest telescope today is of course the twin Keck telescopes, even taken one by one. And before that, the largest scope was the Russian 6-meter reflector. And before that the Hale 5-meter telescope, and before that the Hooker 2.5-meter telescope. But before that? I'd like to assemble a list of the world's largest telescopes, in chronological order. Ideally it should cover all the time from Galileo's telescope in 1609 to the present time, and be complete, but quite naturally available information may be incomplete or inaccurate particularly from the 1600's and 1700's. Paul- Fun project. I assume your interest here is in _astronomical_ telescopes? I only ask this because I doubt that Galileo's telescope was the largest telescope in the world at the time, although it was certainly the first that we know to have been used as a truly astronomical instrument. This raises the interesting question of whether there have been any non-astronomical telescopes since that time that were actually the largest telescopes in the world. Yes, I assumed astronomical telescopes. And I'm quite positive that the astronomical telescopes were the largest, except possibly in the very earliest history of the telescopes as you suggest here. And it may be next to impossible to find out which non-astronomical telescope was the largest at that time.... _________________________________________________ Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se WWW: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/ http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/ |
#17
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The largest telescopes in the world
Grant Gussie wrote:
Between the commissioning of the 60 and 100 inch telescopes on Mount Wilson, the 72inch Plaskett telescope at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, British Columbia was commissioned for the first time in early 1917 I believe (final configuration in 1918). Being built at essentially the same time as the Hooker, it is debatable (depending on what you accept as the completion date of the two telescopes) whether it was ever the world's largest telescope. But the DAO staff insist it was for a few months, as it did beat the Hooker to first light. The Hooker saw first light first. The 72-inch Plaskett telescope was commissioned in 1918. The claim is that the 100-inch -- which saw first light in 1917 -- was not operational at the time and thus the 72-inch was the world's largest operational telescope. Mike Simmons |
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The largest telescopes in the world
Paul Schlyter wrote:
Mike Simmons wrote: Paul Schlyter wrote: I'd like to assemble a list of the world's largest telescopes, in chronological order. I've always been fascinated by this and hoped that someone would put such a list together. There was a great article in Sky and Telescope a few years ago that should help but I can't locate it. It had a list of all of the world's largest telescopes of various designs and included their commissioning dates. The section on refractors should prove useful as that's where the older instruments are. Could you try to remember, to the best of your ability, how many years ago that article appeared? I have Sky and Telescope since about 40 years back, and can look through them, and it would be nice to have the search narrowed down as much as possible. I'm sure it was published no longer ago than 1996. I think it was at least two years ago but I'm not sure of that. It was a feature article so it shouldn't be that hard to find. Sky and Tel has an online search of the archives in its section on buying back issues that can narrow the candidates considerably. I tried searching it but there were a few possibilities based on the titles so I wasn't sure which one it was. 1948-1974 5.0 m Hale 200-inch, Mt Palomar, California, USA The correct location name is "Palomar Mountain". OK, I've corrected that in my list. But it's "Mt Wilson" and not "Wilson Mountain" ? "Mount Wilson" is correct. When first named it was referred to as "Wilson's Peak" but that name hasn't been used in 100 years. The original name of the observatory -- at the time of first light of the 60-inch and 100-inch -- was "Mount Wilson Solar Observatory". The word "Solar" was dropped after dedication of the 100-inch (some time in 1918, I believe). Mike Simmons |
#19
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The largest telescopes in the world
Ante Perkovic wrote:
Paul Schlyter wrote: The world's largest telescope today is of course the twin Keck telescopes, even taken one by one. Wrong! It's Arecibo! :-) ....OK I assumed optical astronomical telescopes. If we're going to include any kind of telescope, then what about radio interferometers, like the VLA? Or what about radio telescopes cooperating interferometrically on different continents, creating sort of an effective aperture the size of the Earth !!! Compared to those, Arecibo, Keck etc are midgets !!!! :-) Ante -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se WWW: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/ http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/ |
#20
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The largest telescopes in the world
Thanks everybody for your comments! I have now updated my list, and I believe it's now fairly complete from 1783 and on. Now comes the hardest part: try to fill in the holes in the list before 1783..... It's of course a good idea to consider a telescope the largest in the world only when it's operational. Therefore I now consider Lord Rosse's Leviathan to be the "king" of telescopes only until 1878, when it was used for the last time. Another good idea is to divide the scopes in categories, and have separate lists for reflectors and refractors, and during recent years perhaps also a list for reflectors with segmented mirrors. And then we also have the radio telescopes (yep, Arecibo is much larger than Keck!). And perhaps we also should have a list for radio interferometers (e.g. the VLA) and also optical interferometers (they'll probably soon be operational, although the Hooker telescope used an early version of an interferometer decades ago). And a category by itself would be the astrographs, i.e. refractors with 4-lens objectives, designed for the widest possible field of view; that category ended when the Schmidt telescope appeared. And then we have Schmidt telescopes and other catadioptric scopes..... But those will all be future projects. This list is about optical astronomical telescopes, both refractors and reflectors, and the latter both single mirror and segmented. The evolution of telescopes can be divided into several "eras": 1. The chromatic (= single-lens) refractor, from 1609 to perhaps 1730. This era culminated with the so-called "air telescopes", i.e. chromatic refractors with very large f-ratio and thus very long focal lengths (up to 50-100 meters), in order to minimize chromatic aberration. 2. The metallic mirror reflector, from ca 1730 to 1878, which culminated with William Herschel's telescopes and Lord Rosse's Leviathan. The end of this era also marked the end of the era when the world's largest telescopes were owned by amateur astronomers. 3. The achromatic refractor: During 1878-1889 the world's largest telescopes were refractors. The evolution of big refractors met a dead end with the Yerkes refractor 1897 - no other operational refractor has ever been larger. 4. The sigle glass mirror reflector, from 1889 to 1993. These telesscopes were very successful and are now the most common scopes even among amateur astronomers. 5. The multiple (segmented) mirror reflector, from 1993 and on. Future large mirrors will most likely be mostly segmented. (Will we ever see a segmented refractor? :-) So here's what my list looks today. Comments and suggestions are still welcome, but I think I'll have to dig through many issues of Sky and Telescope for more info about the time period prior to 1783 (when Herschel's 0.43 meter reflector of 20 feet focal length became operational). That'll take some time, so it'll probably take awhile before I post a significantly updated version of this list. But whenever I have more info, I'll post it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- World's largest Aperture Scope scope in 1609 0.044 m Galileos 5-6 foot f.l. refractor, x33 1640 ca ? 15-20 foot refractors 1656 0.07 m Christian Huygens 23 f.l. foot refractor, x100 1670 ca ? Hevelius 140 foot refractor 1675 The "air telescope" 1730 ca Large reflectors 1774 William Herschel starts making telescopes 1783-1789 0.43 m William Herschel's 20 foot f.l. reflector, Bath, England Later used by John Herschel in South Africa 1789-1839 1.22 m William Herschel's 40 foot f.l. reflector, Bath, England Destroyed in a gale 1839 1839-1845 0.91 m Lord Rosse's first reflector with 3-foot aperture, built in 1826 1845-1878 1.83 m Lord Rosse's Leviathan, 6 foot aperture, Birr Castle, Ireland Last used in 1878 Deteriorated rapidly from 1908 Dismantled in 1914 - mirror moved to Science Museum Restored in 1998 with a modern glass mirror (original mirror remains at Science Museum) 1878-1887 0.69 m Refractor, Vienna Observatory, Austria 1887-1888 0.76 m Refractor, Cote d'Azur Observatory, Nice, France 1888-1889 0.91 m Refractor, Lick Observatory, Mt Hamilton, USA 1889-1908 1.52 m A.A. Common's 60-inch reflector; purchased by Harvard University around 1900 (1898-... 1.57 m John Peate's 62-inch mirror for the American University Observatory; never mounted in a telescope) 1908-1917 1.52 m 60-inch reflector, Mt Wilson, California, USA 1917 1.83 m 72-inch Plaskett reflector, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (largest for a few months) 1917-1948 2.5 m Hooker 100-inch reflector, Mt Wilson, California, USA 1948-1974 5.0 m Hale 200-inch reflector, Palomar Mountain, California, USA 1974-1993 6.0 m BTA-6, Mt Pashtoukov, Caucasus, Russia 1993-2003 9.8 m Keck, Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA 2003- 10.4 m CTC, Canary Islands, Spain Interesting links related to the history of telescopes: ------------------------------------------------------- Some early telescope history: http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo...telescope.html Binocular history: http://inventors.about.com/library/i...ltelescope.htm Lots of links related to telescope and binocular history: http://home.europa.com/~telscope/binotele.htm Some historical telescopes: http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...00913_MB_.html Herschel museum: http://www.bath-preservation-trust.o...hel/index.html http://peterchow.com/photos/United-K...rschel-Museum/ Lord Rosse's Leviathan: http://www.labbey.com/Telescopes/Parsontown.html http://www.arm.ac.uk/history/birr6.html http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry/univers-rosse.htm Largest telescopes today: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ing_telescopes http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ing_telescopes http://www.seds.org/billa/bigeyes.html -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se WWW: http://www.stjarnhimlen.se/ http://home.tiscali.se/pausch/ |
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