Here's Chabot's museum description of the telescope.
http://www.chabotspace.org/vsc/exhibits/califastronomy/ritchey.asp
And here's a really neat article on the Crossley.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/butowsky5/astro4c.htm
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
A Famous Telescope
There are famous telescope makers and there are famous telescopes. Like the Clarks, makers of incredibly gorgeous, high-performance refractors prized even today, George Willis Ritchey was a unique personality in telescope making history. His 24-inch reflector, currently on display at the Chabot Science Center in Oakland, California, was a ground-breaking telescope that proved to a grudging astronomical community that reflectors could take high-resolution photographs. To be sure, Isaac Roberts and Henry Draper had used smaller reflectors for astrophotography before Ritchey, but Ritchey's 24-inch and Lick Observatory's Crossley 36-inch (after Perrine extensively modified it) paved the way for modern reflectors over the increasingly cumbersome refractor in astrophysical research. Donald Osterbrock's "Pauper and Prince: Ritchey, Hale, and Big American Telescopes" is a fascinating account of Ritchey's life.
Here's Chabot's museum description of the telescope.
And here's a really neat article on the Crossley.
Here's Chabot's museum description of the telescope.
And here's a really neat article on the Crossley.
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2 comments:
I agree that some classic smaller 'scopes can still be used for fundamental research, but it appears that their days are waning. I was an undergrad summer student at the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket in 1985, where we had an 8" Clark that we used for public viewing every Friday night. But there was also a 6" Cooke that was used for expanding the plate collection of RR Lyrae variables. From the MMO website (www.mmo.org) it appears that was decommissioned in 1995 and the summer students did their research elsewhere. Recently, however, they have obtained a 24" to renew their research. See the press release below. The video is OK but doesn't show too much.
So for amateurs, old still works; but for even semi-serious amateurs, like students at MMO, it appears that CCDs and computers are required.
MMO press release: http://www.mmo.org/subcat.php?cat_id=6&subcat_id=48&art_id=223
I would agree, to some extent, but your comment centers on "detectors" rather than the aperture of each telescope. At MMO, they're upgrading from a 7.5-inch to a 24-inch. The latter has 19x the light-gathering power (depending on secondary size). But there are fundamental, but not sexy, observing programs that can still be done with the 7.5-inch. Moreover, and I hate to be a curmudgeon here, in our society's headlong race to put our entire lives in the hands of digital media, I am not convinced of the longevity of digital media. I know that the HCO is digitizing its entire plate vault. But each time data is replicated (and it will be multiple times) noise is introduced. (See Shannon, 1948).
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