FIG. 209.—Enlarging Camera. F, heliostat for throwing beam of sunlight
on the reflector, which throws it into the camera; E, negative; B,
focussing-lens; C, plate- or paper-holder; D, focussing-screw.
]
If we wish to obtain a large direct image of the moon, we must, as said
before, employ a telescope of as long a focal length as possible; for
reasons just mentioned, this is not always desirable. If, however, large
images can be obtained as good as small ones, they can of course be
enlarged to a much greater size. The primary image of the moon taken by
Mr. De La Rue’s exquisite reflector is not quite an inch in diameter. In
one of Mr. Rutherfurd’s telescopes of fifteen feet focus, the image of
the moon is somewhat larger—about one and a half inch in diameter. In
Mr. Newall’s magnificent refractor, the focal length of which is thirty
feet, the diameter is over three inches. In the Melbourne reflector the
image obtained is larger still.
In celestial photography we have not only to deal with faint objects.
With the sun the difficulty is of no ordinary character in the opposite
direction, because the light is so powerful that we have to get rid of
it. Now there are two methods of doing this, and as in a faint object we
get more light by increasing the aperture, so with a bright light like
that of the sun we can get rid of a large amount of it by reducing the
aperture of our telescope; but it is found better to reduce
infinitesimally the time of exposure, and methods have been adopted by
which that has been brought down to the one-hundredth part of a second.
Let us show the simple way in which this can be done by the means of an
addition to an ordinary plate-holder.
Fig. 208 shows the ordinary plate-holder, like those used generally for
photography. What is termed the instantaneous slide, B, Fig. 210,
consists of a plate with an adjustible slit in it inserted between the
object itself and the focus. This can be drawn rapidly across the path
of the rays by means of a spring, D; we can bring it to one side, and
fix it by a piece of cotton, E, and then we can release it by burning
the cotton, when the spring draws it rapidly across. The velocity of the
rush of the aperture across the plate, and the time of exposure, can be
determined by the strength of the spring and the aperture of the slit.
If the velocity is too great, we can alter the size of the slit, C. If
we absorb some of the superabundant light by means of yellow glass, or
some similar material, we can keep the opening wide enough to prevent
any bad effects of diffraction coming into play.
[Illustration:
FIG. 210.—Instantaneous Shutter.
]
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