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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."
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.
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
This will NOT happen. The International Astronomical Union has Press Release in their FAQ section confirming pluto's status as a planet.
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.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
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
I go to Texas Tech, and our observatory is now in the middle of a lit up parking lot.
Even though bright lights ruin many observations, planet and moon observing can still take place. Planets are bright enough that having a dark background does not matter much.
Also, sometimes filters can be used to filter out light from certain street lamps, but not all lights are easy to filter because some have "fat" spectrum lines that filters cannot target without also washing out star and nebula light. Thus, lights with narrow spectrum bands (very specific frequencies) are better around observatories. Observatory towns sometimes pass laws that allow only certain kinds of street lamps in the area so that filters can be applied to block out their light.
However, residents sometimes don't like such lamps because either they have an odd tint to them, and/or their light seems "harsh" and unnatural in a similar way that most people prefer old-fashioned heated metal filement bulb light to flourescent light. Generally heated or charged gas lights will have the narrower spectrum bands. One of the reason they are often more efficient is that the narrow bands are more likely to fall in the visible part of the spectrum. Thus, less light is "wasted" on places in the spectrum that humans cannot see anyhow, such as infrared.
Table-ized A.I.
If you accept Pluto and Sedna as planets, "regardless of size," what about Ceres? What about Quaoar? What about Chiron? You've got to draw a line somewhere.
The truth is, there are terrestrial planets (and terrestrial satellites, like Io or the Moon), asteroids (and asteroidal satellites), Jovian planets, Kuiper Belt Objects (and SKBOs, and KBO-like satellites, like Charon and maybe Triton), and Sedna's kind of object, and comets (little KBO-like objects that come in so far they start to sublimate). "Planet" is an old category referring to 6 ojbects that can be seen obviously "wandering" around the sky with the naked eye; we're stuck with at a category because of tradition. So from now on, nothing will be a planet unless it is bigger than Pluto.
This kind of accuracy is fairly common in the world of telescope making. There are many amateurs capable of producing optics to that level. The trick is, they are doing it with mirrors, where you only need one amazing surface. Lenses require many more surfaces, and if they aren't perfectly matched, you lose accuracy.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?