Astronomy: The Science of the Heavenly BodiesTodd, David P. (David Peck)
History
Astronomy: The Science of the Heavenly Bodies
Todd, David P. (David Peck)
Astronomy
A better plan is that of Newton, who placed a small plane speculum at an
angle of 45 degrees in the optical axis where the secondary mirror of
the Gregory-Cassegrainian type is placed. The rays are then received by
the eyepiece at the side of the upper end of the tube, the observer
looking in at right angles to the axis. And a modern improvement first
used by Draper is a small rectangular prism in place of the little plane
speculum, effecting a saving of five to ten per cent of the light.
It is not easy to say which type of telescope, the refractor or the
reflector, is the more famous. Nor which is the better or more useful,
or the more likely to lead in the astronomy of the future. When the
successors of Dollond had carried the achromatic refractor to the limit
enforced by the size of the glass disks they were able to secure, they
found these instruments not so great an improvement after all. The
single-lens telescopes of great focal length were nearly as good
optically, though much more awkward to handle. But the quality of the
glass obtainable in that day appeared to set an arbitrary limit to that
great amplification of size and power which progress in observational
astronomy demanded.
Then came the elder Herschel, best known and perhaps the greatest of all
astronomers. At Bath, England, music was his profession, especially the
organ. But he was dissatisfied with his little Gregorian reflector, and
being a very clever mechanician he set out to build a reflector for
himself. It is said that he cast and polished nearly 200 mirrors, in the
course of experiments on the most highly reflective type of alloys, and
the sort of mechanism that would enable him to give them the highest
polish. In all his work he was ably and enthusiastically aided by his
sister, Caroline Herschel, most famous of all women astronomers.
Upward in size of his mirrors he advanced, till he had a speculum of two
feet diameter with a tube 20 feet long. Twelve to fifteen years had
elapsed when in 1781, while testing one of these reflectors on stars in
the constellation Gemini, he made the first discovery of a planet since
the invention of the telescope--the great planet now known as Uranus.
Under the patronage of King George, he advanced to telescopes of still
greater size, his largest being no less than forty feet in length, with
a speculum of four feet in diameter. Two new satellites of Saturn were
discovered with this giant reflector, which was dismantled by Sir John
Herschel with appropriate ceremonies, including the singing of an ode by
the Herschel family assembled inside of the tube, on New Year's Eve,
1839-40.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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