Abstract
Until recently, the invention of the telescope was generally attributed to a Dutch spectacle maker called Hans Lippershey (or Johann or Lipperhey or Lippersheim, 1570–1619). He worked at Middelburg on the island of Walcheren, some 130 km southwest of Amsterdam. The probably apocryphal story has it that in 1608 his children discovered, while playing with some of his spare lenses, that one combination made a distant church spire appear much closer. The exact combination of lenses they and he used is no longer known. It could have been a pair of converging lenses, though these would produce an upside-down image, so a converging lens and a diverging lens such as Galileo’s invention is also possible.
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Notes
- 1.
Little is known for certain about Cassegrain. Research by Andre Baranne and Francois Launay in 1997 suggests that he might have been the priest and teacher Laurent Cassegrain (c. 1629–1693, probably born near Chartres). Other suggestions include Guillaume Cassegrain (a sculptor), Jacques Cassegrain (a doctor) and Nicolas Cassegrain (nothing further known). Quite possibly some of these names may belong to the same individual.
- 2.
Angular measure is normally in degrees (°), minutes of arc (′) and seconds of arc (″), with
360° = a full circle
60′ = 1°
60″ = 1′
For some purposes, though, radians need to be used, and
2π radians = 360° = a full circle
so that
1 radian = 57.2958° = 57° 17′ 45″ = 206,264″ and 1° = 0.01745 radians.
The use of hours, minutes and seconds as an angular measure is discussed in Chap. 4.
- 3.
Named for Karl Jansky (1905–50) who, in 1932, started off radio astronomy by detecting radio emission from the galactic center.
- 4.
The RATAN−600 radio telescope in the Caucasus has a diameter twice that of the Arecibo dish, but consists of just a thin annulus made up from 895 7.4 m × 2 m mirrors. Its maximum practical collecting area is thus around 10,000 m2 compared with Arecibo’s 73,000 m2.
- 5.
Originally MERLIN stood for ‘Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network.’ It now uses dedicated fiber optic cables to link the telescopes, but the original acronym has been retained.
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Kitchin, C.R. (2013). Types of Telescopes. In: Telescopes and Techniques. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4891-4_1
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