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Pluto's Discoverer's Backyard Telescope For Sale
Schart writes "My dad, an amateur astronomer/astrophotographer, sent me this link detailing the potential selling of Clyde Tombaugh (the man who discovered Pluto)'s backyard telescope. It features a 16 inch f/10 mirror which was hand-ground by the astronomer himself as well as a massive superstructure and 1-ton tube."
COuld someone just accept Pluto and Sedna as planets regardless of size?
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Perhaps, some philantrophist can buy this piece of history to donate to a museum? Such pieces of history deserve more exposure than in the home of a private collector.
You know, I have a friend in the middle of a pine logging forest. Perfect place to put a good telescope, especially a famous one.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
From the link:
Ernest inquiries only please!
Will this be the basis for a new movie, Ernest Goes to Space?
"Hey, i have the telescope that first saw Pluto!"
"That's nothing, yesterday, i made a PIZZA."
This isn't the telescope used to discover pluto. Pluto was discovered in 1930, this telescope wasn't even finished until 1960.
Probably a nice telescope, but it doesn't come with discovery bragging rights.
Nasa purchases the telescope and lashes it to Hubble - hey presto, cheap fix, NASA saves money by recycling and everyone's happy.
AT&ROFLMAO
Clyde W. Tombaugh 1906-1997
An Interview with Dr. Tombaugh
Status of Pluto
Image s of Pluto
The New Planet(oid)
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Nothing to see here
"Its primary system is a 16-inch f/10 mirror hand-ground, figured, and completed by the discoverer of Pluto himself."
But it doesn't actually say it was used to discover Pluto.
Only that Plutos discoverer made something that completed the mirror.
Yeah right. Observatory right in the middle of a pine forrest. Great news until it catches fire and burns down your telescope, like what happened at Mt Stromlo observatory in australia 18months ago. See here.
Nice 'scope. Shame he built it under a bunch of trees. Shady location of course, keeps the sun off nicely. Also keeps off the light from Saturn's spokes (huh? WTF is THAT about?)
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my university could use this telescope. I go to Texas Tech, and our observatory is now in the middle of a lit up parking lot. The other one fell off of its artillery mount. We have a few reflecting scopes, the kind you carry around, but this would be a neat monument/useful tool. Bah' It seems all my school wants to improve is its 256 billion $ football stadium... Still, perhaps the right place for this is a non elite school
COuld someone just accept Pluto and Sedna as planets regardless of size?
Why? Because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling? Will you still feel the same when the 10'000th Kuiper Belt "planet" the size of Sedna will be discovered? And it will, eventually - there's a huge amount of ill-light space that far from the sun, and we've barely scratched the surface of all that's bound to be lurking out there. We should really reserve a term (or two) to denote a) the four sizeable rocky bodies orbiting the sun inside the asteroid belt, and b) the four gas giants orbiting the sun between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt.
Pluto is a special case: on one hand it looks like what we would expect from a typical Kuiper belt object (KBO), on the other it is bound to be the closest large KBO by far. Historically it was discovered (the same as Neptune) by its perturbative effect on another planet's orbit, long before any other KBOs, so it gets grandfathered in as an honorary "planet". Fair enough.
Sedna, on the other hand, is three times (!) as far out from the sun as Pluto; at that distance we expect to find thousands of KBOs of comparable size. Calling them all "planets" would be like starting to call all schools of whatever level "university" - a status grab that would ultimately achieve nothing but a devaluation of the more prestigious term, and a muddling of the underlying factual distinctions.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
What do links to the website of the submitter's dad have to do with the selling of Clyde Tombaugh's backyard telescope?
Clyde Tombaugh (the man who discovered Pluto)'s
Best. Misuse of an apostrophe. Ever
-Colin
$256 billion? You expect me to believe that? Considering the US' GDP is only around $50 trillion, that sounds like major falsity.
The Natural History Museum didn't include pluto as a planet. That's good enough for me.
-Colin
maybe after Ernest Gets Resurrected
...and lectures in astronomy. I do quite a bit of photography and I'd read somewhere that Leica lenses (generally considered to be the best 35mm lenses available) are ground to an accuracy of about half a wavelength of light - say 200nm. He just shrugged and said his lenses are accurate to better than 1/10 wavelength. He designed and built the lens grinding machine himself, so he should know.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
massive superstructure and 1-ton tube
Shipping and handling are going to be a bitch.
...as well as a massive superstructure and 1-ton tube.
Buyer to pay actual shipping costs. Will ship only to North America. Seller prefers Paypal.
--trb
"...soooo, why don't you come over to my place and I'll show you my Telescope..."
The sad part is, they will actually mean it, I know, I've done it. But this one would be really cool, at least to me it wood, er would.
'And all the monkeys aren't in the zoo Every day you meet quite a few...'
If you're interested in the historical significance of its previous owner, then this might be the telescope for you. For the rest of us, there are far better options.
First, this is a huge contraption. The f/10 focal ratio means the focal length is 160 inches so your actual field of view is going to be quite narrow; on the order of 1/2 degree or less. That makes this a good planetary scope but rules out alot of extended deep space objects. For example, though you can't see all of it with your naked eye, the Andromeda galaxy is actually more than 3 degrees (that's 6 full moons).
Second, portability. The steel truss tube alone for this scope weighs 2000 pounds. Not going to be able to take that to many dark locations in your trunk.
One can buy a quality 16-inch truss-type Dobsonian telescope for $4000. You can find 20-inch or larger Dobsonian telescopes for under $6000 (a gentleman 20 miles from me is currently selling his 22-inch Starmaster dob with a premium mirror for $8000). Equatorial platforms can be built/bought for these scopes to allow adequate tracking for long-exposure astrophotography. These are generally faster f-ratio scopes (usually between f/5 and f/4) so they offer much wider fields of views than an f/10 scope. And here's the kicker: they're portable. They can be broken down in minutes and transported in an SUV or minivan.
So, for collectors, this is an interesting telescope. For the rest of us, there are better options if you're looking for afforable large apertures.
Lowell thought that very small deviations of the motion of Uranus from its calculated orbit indicated that there must be another planet ("Planet X") perturbing its motion. He estimated where it might be, started a big search for it, and then died.
Many years later, Tombaugh stumbled across Pluto while making a survey of the entire ecliptic. Yes, the planet was very roughly in the region of the sky Lowell had predicted. But it was soon obvious that the mass of Pluto was way, way, way too small for it to be responsible for the residuals in the orbit of Uranus. It was simply coincidence that one object (Pluto) happened to be roughly in the same area that another (the hypothetical perturbing planet) was calculated to be.
An article by Standish in Astronomical Journal (1993) shows that the residuals Lowell was using were incorrectly computed, and that there is no evidence for a perturbing planet. Here's a section of the abstract:
And yes, I am an astronomer.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Ok...I fell for it. I clicked the link. Man, do you have that book-marked? I bet you have that as your wallpaper. Get a life. Jeesh cb
Remember, licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets.
i just wonder what the shipping cost will be.
This cool piece of junk is definitely worth to be placed in a public exposition, just next to some relay computer. An astronomer capable of drilling and bolting is a rarity which must be remembered!
There you are, staring at me again.
In this article, it says the mirror for the telescope was ground by the astronomer himself. However, in my family it has always been said that the LENS in the telescope used to discover Pluto was ground by my great-grandfather, Napoleon Carreau. I know nothing about astronomy or the history book version of Pluto's discovery, so I'm a little confused. I was also under the impression that the "planet X" telescope was in a museum right now. Is it possible that this telescope uses a lense in addition to a mirror? Or perhaps that the telescope my great-grandfather helped make was a completely different one? Or something else that I'm not considering?
I grew up in Las Cruces and my Dad was a professor at NMSU. We lived about half a mile from Dr. Tombaugh and when I was a teen he invited me to come see this telescope. We looked at mars and venus that night. Really impressive.
He was also a good teacher and nice guy.Later he lectured a 101 level astronomy class on the discovery of pluto, that my wife took.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
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From http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tom0pro-1
"...he tried to register for freshman astronomy. The professor in charge of the course refused to enroll him. He thought Tombaugh's presence in the class would be inappropriate, since Tombaugh had already achieved something only a handful of astronomers have ever done."
I just love it when academics turn away genius.
It says volumes about the current state of our system of teach and make money.
Never thought I would be seeing this kinda of thing for sale on the Internet. It certainly is a testament to how fast technology has warped us into the future.
With such a tiny field of view it is incredible he found Pluto...and with a hand ground mirror to boot!
As a junior in high school, I had the privelege of having lunch with Clyde Tombaugh in 1985 in Flagstaff. A friend of the family worked for the newspaper, knew I loved astronomy, arranged meeting and I'll never forget it. Just myself, stepdad, reporter, and a living legend. He was smart and funny, and I'd love to be able to buy that telescope!
Great... can I pay with potential $100 bills? They're legit as the telescope, I swear!
I'm surprised the ad didn't include the (probably necessary) text:
"Warning: This telescope will not allow you to view Pluto."
This is my old neighborhood, about five houses away. I used to walk by it every day with the dog. I never had the guts to run up and take a look through it...
It's made with lots of common stuff including tractor parts and other farm equipment, and alot of cinder blocks. The story goes that they wanted to put it in a museum but at the time Tombaugh was still using it on a regular basis. It's commonly known around the area that although CT discovered pluto and used the telescope right up until he died, it was NOT the telescope he used to discover pluto.
It's not actually in Las Cruces, it's in Mesilla Park, across the tracks from Las Cruces. It's just a few blocks from Clyde Tombaugh elementary school.
Not a bad item to own if you've got the space, and it would be better than where it is, which is mostly under trees.
=R
Pluto's Discoverer's Backyard Telescope For Sale
not
Pluto Discovery Telescope For Sale
"Bookmarked"? Shit, I have it memorized :)
On Friday afternoon we went to Mt. Stromlo (on our way to the NASA deep space station at Tidbinbilla). Got there just after they closed, and decided not to take any pictures cuz, frankly, there wasn't that much to see from the parking lot.
By Saturday, the place had burned to the ground. I figure that we may have been the last two visitors to see the place. And no pictures!
I think this telescope of his is of more interest to museums than the one for sale.
I grew up in Las Cruces, NM. Very close to Clyde W. Tombaugh's home. Back when I was in the Boy Scouts we got the chance to use this telescope. The workmanship is awesome. This thing was very mechanical, even the clockwork on the side that allowed it to track the sky seemed to be masterfully built and very effective. The mirror quality was something to envy. We could easily make out colors in some of the brighter nebula. That was also the first time I had seen the split in saturns rings. I hope whoever buys this, respects the work that Mr. Tombaugh put into it.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.