|
History:
-
The name of the telescope, ADH, reflects the names of different observatories
that sponsored the telescope. A stands for Armagh Observatory, the
main observatory in Northern Ireland; D for Dunsink Observatory, outside
Dublin in Eire; and H for Harvard.
- "Something
must be said here about Armagh, in particular, because it comes very
much into the story. Armagh Observatory - about thirty miles
inland from Belfast - was founded in the late 18th century and during
Victorian times an important star catalogue was compiled there
by the then Director, a formidable gentleman named Romney Robinson.
(Many stories are told about Dr Robinson. It is certainly true
that on one occasion he managed to make the Government re-route
a major railway line, on the grounds that the vibration of passing
trains would prove an intolerable nuisance to the astronomers at Armagh.)
Subsequently things became rather difficult and the Observatory's
revival came only in the 1930s with the arrival of Dr Eric Mervyn
Lindsay, who had studied astrophysics under Shapley at Harvard.
Lindsay had been assistant at Boyden before being called home to his
native Ireland to take charge of the ailing Armagh Observatory where
to be frank, very little research had been done for decades. Lindsay
was nothing if not energetic. He revitalised the Observatory
whose main instrument had been a modest 10-inch refractor; he installed
an 18-inch Schmidt telescope, able to photograph wide areas of the
sky... His Boyden work with the Magellanic Clouds had shown him the
importance of southern stations, and Boyden was an ideal site for
a new telescope of the kind needed for this sort of work. He
joined forces with the Director of Dunsink Observatory, Professor
Briick, and with Shapley, who was still at Harvard. Between them they
raised sufficient funds for the construction of a new telescope, and
in due course the ADH 36-inch was installed." [Copied from
Moore, pp. 124 - 125.]
- "The
ADH 36-inch was installed. The optical system was of the Schmidt-Cassegrain
pattern. The main drawback of a more conventional telescope is
its small field of view; to photograph the entire sky with, says
the famous Hale 200-inch at Palomar would take an impossibly long
time. A new system had been developed in the 1930s by Bernhard
Schmidt, an Estonian who had originally been concerned with
the manufacture of explosives, but had blown off one of his arms,
and had turned to optics as being rather safer. Basically, his idea
was to use a spherical mirror rather than a paraboloid, and to correct
the inevitable faults by means of a highly complex plate at the top
end of the tube. The result is that wide areas can be photographed
with good definition right to the edge of the plate, and Schmidt's
have proved invaluable - in fact, they provide so much information
that only' recently have instruments been developed for analysing
the results with reasonable speed." [Copied from Moore,
p.125.]
Owners:
Consortium
from Ireland and the USA:
- Armagh
Observatory: North Ireland
- Dunsink
Observatory: Republic of Ireland
- Harvard
University: USA
Where
Located:
|
