Abstract
The General Theory presented in this book primarily relates to imaging with telescopes. It is therefore fitting that the first chapter should provide a brief history of the telescope, its physical evolution over the centuries and, more recently, the development of a rigorous understanding of image formation through Earth's turbulent atmosphere. It is also fitting to recount the astonishing advancements in scientific understanding that have accompanied the evolution of this singular instrument. Following Galileo’s epochal discoveries in 1610, Ptolemy’s thousand-year-old geocentric model of the universe began to crumble. Today, some four centuries later, we find ourselves living in an infinitely more bewildering universe—a universe—governed by relativistic laws at large scales and quantum mechanical laws at small scales. With construction having already begun on a new generation of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) and with continuing advances anticipated in Adaptive Optics (AO), when first light is achieved with these prodigious instruments in the next few years, we will surely enter a new golden age of the telescope. The images harvested by these instruments may turn out no less epochal than those first images observed by Galileo. Not for the first time, the telescope may lead us into a new golden age of scientific discovery.
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Notes
- 1.
Galileo used the name perspicillum to describe his instrument in the Starry Messenger.
- 2.
The Hellenistic astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy (90–168) who lived most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, laid out the geocentric model of the cosmos in his main astronomical work, the Almagest, a greatly influential treatise that represented the culmination of centuries of work by Hellenic and Babylonian astronomers, in particular the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC). Ptolemy’s geocentric ideas were widely accepted throughout Europe and elsewhere for over a thousand years.
- 3.
This and other quotes in this section are taken from “History of the Telescope,” King (1955) and encyclopedia Wikipedia.
- 4.
Tycho Brahe’s comprehensive measurements of the locations of the stars and planets were made to an unprecedented accuracy of about 1.5 arc min. In this pre-telescope era, his measurement instruments comprised long sighting poles.
- 5.
The James Gregory Telescope, named after Gregory, is the largest working optical telescope in the UK. The instrument—a 37-inch Schmidt–Cassegrain design that saw first light in 1962—is located just above sea level near the School of Physics and Astronomy at St. Andrews University and is still used frequently. Gregory also discovered the diffraction grating by passing light through bird feathers and observing the patterns produced. He observed the splitting of sunlight into its component colors about one year after Newton had done so with a prism.
- 6.
Translated into English, BTA stands for Bolshoi Telescope Altazimuth. This instrument pioneered the use of an altazimuth mount with a computer-controlled de-rotator, now a standard feature in large astronomical telescopes.
- 7.
Rayleigh’s criterion for telescope resolution is similar to one he proposed in 1879 for spectro- graph resolution.
- 8.
“Principles of Optics,” Max Born and Emil Wolf, fourth edition (1975).
- 9.
The Sun’s orbital speed around the galaxy—about 275 km/sec—is an order of magnitude greater than Earth’s orbital speed around the Sun.
- 10.
Maxwell identified the speed of light c as a fundamental constant in his unified electromagnetic theory. Einstein identified c as a fundamental constant in his special theory of relativity, a theory that unified space and time into so-called space–time.
- 11.
Einstein, A. (1915) Berl. Sitz. 778, 779, 831, 844. (1916) Ann. D. Physik, (4) 49, 769. Einstein’s general theory of relativity unified his 1905 special theory of relativity with Newton’s laws of gravity.
- 12.
The quasar lies some 8 billion light-years distant; the foreground galaxy—Huchra’s lens—lies a mere 440 million light-years away.
- 13.
The same atmospheric MTF can arise from many different types of atmospheric turbulence spectra as shown in Chap. 2 (Sect. 2.1). To unambiguously identify the correct type requires use of a more general function the two-point two-wavelength correlation function (Chap. 6, Sect. 6.3)—an expression for which was developed by the Author in 1975 though not published until 1991 (McKechnie 1991a, 1991b, Eq. 13).
- 14.
Atmospheric turbulence can be considered a catch-all term that refers essentially to the random temperature- and pressure-related refractive index variations in the atmosphere.
- 15.
Kolmogorov theory was developed by a loosely connected group of individuals, principally, A. N. Kolmogorov, V. I. Tatarski, R. E. Hufnagel, N. R. Stanley and D. L. Fried. Each made separate contributions, leading to something of a patchwork theory sewn together by – as fate would have it – dimensionally inconsistent mathematics (Appendix I). As others embraced the theory, its development effectively became 'open source.' A notable contribution was made by R. J. Noll (Noll, 1976) who established expressions for the Zernike polynomial coefficients for Kolmogorov turbulence.
- 16.
Copies of the manuscript, "Light propagation through the atmosphere and imaging in astronomy," were circulated to J. C. Dainty and others at Imperial College along with several specialist mathematicians.
- 17.
Laterally, Roger F. Griffin (1935 – 2021) was Emeritus Professor of observational astronomy, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.
- 18.
Townes also acted as science adviser to every US president from Harry S. Truman to William J. Clinton.
- 19.
Seminar presentation (September 26, 1989) by the Author, "Obtaining diffraction limited images at near infrared wavelengths using large ground based telescopes." AFRL (Bldg. 400), Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. (Attendees: D. W. McCarthy, Jr., K. Hege, Steward Observatory, Tucson, G. Loos, B. Venet, AFRL, R. Haddock, Lentec Corp.
- 20.
From 1964 to 1978, Horace Babcock was director of Palomar Observatories and thus had authority over two of the largest telescopes in the world at that time, the 200-inch Mt. Palomar and the 100-inch Mt. Wilson instruments.
- 21.
Albuquerque Journal, Mon Dec 17, 1990, Article Headline: “Looking Sharp on Earth, Ground-Based Telescopes Can Be as Good as Hubble, Physicist Says.” To balance the Article, the Science Editor Author, Rex Graham, telephone-interviewed several astronomers, including Dr. Babcock.
- 22.
The UV atmospheric transmission cut-off occurs at about 0.3 µm.
- 23.
M.A. Salam (1926–1996) took up the position of professor of physics at Imperial College in 1957. In 1979, he along with S.L. Glashow and S. Weinberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.”
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McKechnie, T.S. (2022). History of the Telescope and Its Remarkable Contribution to Scientific Discovery (and the 400-Year Journey from Galileo to a Rigorous General Theory of Imaging Through Earth's Turbulent Atmosphere). In: General Theory of Light Propagation and Imaging Through the Atmosphere. Progress in Optical Science and Photonics, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98828-9_1
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