The traditional looking telescope is the Smith 107-inch. The other, in the geodesic dome, is the 433-inch HET. The photo of the HET was taken from a glassed-in (but heated!) visitor area and is a little confusing. The top part is the inside of the geodesic dome that makes the walls of the observatory. The large crossed members are what link the top and bottom of the telescope and allow it to be focused and rotated – replacing the tube in a traditional telescope. At the bottom is a pair of jeans attached to an engineer; he is adjusting the mirror right over his head; that mirror is on the front edge of 95 mates that gather and focus starlight. The blue pipe follows the perimeter of the mirror array.
As part of the serendipity of travel, we stumbled into a nearly three hour tour of the McDonald Observatory, a short drive from our campground in this very sparsely population section of Texas.
Our engineer guide first talked to us in the visitor center about our place in the universe (insignificant, it seems, in case you hadn’t heard) and about our own sun. His technology allowed him to intersperse live telescopic looks at the sun, and that failing because of passing clouds, DVR images of what people saw on previous visits. Solar flares, sun spots, and such like. It was very well done and cool technology.
He then shuttled us to a 6900 foot peak where we enjoyed an inside tour of the 107-inch Smith Telescope Observatory, constructed in 1968. Our guide demonstrated practically everything – the aiming of the telescope, the rotating of the dome and opening of its doors, even the raising of the floor we were standing on – this designed to ease maintenance access. He said the nearest Wal-Mart is 90 miles away making this peak in the middle of nowhere a great place to stargaze. About 125 engineers, astronomers, and other support people live there fulltime. There are few school age kids, which is not surprising.
The only negative for us was the ambient temperature – about 38 degrees, inside and outside. This is less of a problem for modern astronomers because they are located in a distant heated space, images gathered and transmitted electronically.
We then toured the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, dedicated in 1997 and having a 433-inch mirror (Palomar is 200 inches). It looks unlike the traditional telescope as there is no visible tube, and the reflective mirror is made up of 96 separate smaller mirrors rather than one large mirror. This allows the gathering of even more and dimmer starlight at a lower cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment