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Pluto's Discoverer's Backyard Telescope For Sale

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the secondhand-bragging-rights dept.

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."

44 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Pluto and Sedna as planets by kiwipeso · · Score: 2, Interesting

    COuld someone just accept Pluto and Sedna as planets regardless of size?

    --
    - Kaos games and encryption systems developer
    1. Re:Pluto and Sedna as planets by VanillaCoke420 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I would rather downgrade Pluto as a Kuiper object, and Sedna as well.

    2. Re:Pluto and Sedna as planets by Agent+Orange · · Score: 5, Informative

      This will NOT happen. The International Astronomical Union has Press Release in their FAQ section confirming pluto's status as a planet.

    3. Re:Pluto and Sedna as planets by Moonpie+Madness · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem my friend is that we will discover dozens more in that size range. It is terribly inconvenient, and pretty inaccurate, to momorize the list of 30-50 planets when clearly there is a difference between merc-neptune and the rest. we need to chance the way we picture the solar system. it isnt a defined planet of ten spheres that suddenly stop. it goes on and on and on and thins to the point where its just arbitrary to define the end. no problem naming the solar orbital objects sedna and pluto and etc, but its impractical to classify every such thing a planet just to make scientists feel warm

    4. Re:Pluto and Sedna as planets by yppiz · · Score: 4, Informative
      No, they've just said no one has proposed it. From the IAU's FAQ:
      No proposal to change the status of Pluto as the ninth planet in the solar system has been made by any Division, Commission or Working Group of the IAU responsible for solar system science. Accordingly, no such initiative has been considered by the Officers or Executive Committee, who set the policy of the IAU itself.
      Reading the rest of the FAQ, their position seems to be that a) Pluto's status is a sensitive issue, b) it probably shouldn't be a planet, c) for the IAU to change its status requires that someone propose the change, d) no one within the IAU has proposed this, e) the Planetary Systems Sciences Small Bodies Naming Commission in particular does not want to push the issue.

      --Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

    5. Re:Pluto and Sedna as planets by Serious+Simon · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think it would make the Plutonians very unhappy if the recognition of their home celestial body as a planet would be withdrawn. They might even start a nuclear war using Plutonian bombs.

    6. Re:Pluto and Sedna as planets by VanillaCoke420 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I always thought that there was a plutonic friendship between our two worlds!

    7. Re: Pluto and Sedna as planets by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny


      > I always thought that there was a plutonic friendship between our two worlds!

      We have a lot in common, what with both planets being ruled by plutocracies.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    8. Re:Pluto and Sedna as planets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  2. Belonngs to a museum by ChaoticPenguin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Belonngs to a museum by REBloomfield · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not the telescope that he discovered Pluto with though, so I don 't think it's all that intriuging[sic].

  3. Ernest inquiries... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the link:

    Ernest inquiries only please!

    Will this be the basis for a new movie, Ernest Goes to Space?

  4. What's the point? by Debug+This · · Score: 3, Funny
    It's a nice antique and everything, but i dont see the point in buying it.. in practical terms, it probably does less than a 'new' telescope could, and i don't like the prospects for "bragging rights" either --

    "Hey, i have the telescope that first saw Pluto!"
    "That's nothing, yesterday, i made a PIZZA."

    1. Re:What's the point? by REBloomfield · · Score: 2, Funny

      it's *not* the telescope that first saw Pluto. So the pizza's even better.

    2. Re:What's the point? by jridley · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There's no reason to think it wouldn't be every bit as good as a new 16" scope. An inch of mirror diameter is the same size then as now, the quality just depends on how well it was ground. Mirror grinding hasn't changed significantly in 100+ years except people are using machines for the tedious parts now (they're not more accurate, just less tedious). There's no reason in the world to assume that this scope isn't every bit as good as any new scope.

      At worst, the mirror may need stripping and recoating, but that's normal maintenance.

      I have a 15" scope that I just built 3 years ago; I'd bet the views are almost identical. This is an equitorially mounted scope, so it's in a way better than mine, though I can put mine in my car in 10 minutes.

      I hope that this scope goes to a group that will take good care of it, and hopefully let the public use it. Any telescope that's being looked through by the public, especially kids, is going to waste. I think Clyde would have liked that.

  5. Not the pluto 'scope by dtl · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by VanillaCoke420 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, but it does come with "hey I got Clyde Tombaugh's telescope" bragging rights.

    2. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by icecow · · Score: 2, Funny

      Sell it on ebay (as a Disney product?)

      --
      Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
    3. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by humanerror · · Score: 2, Informative

      RTFA? Nah, I thought not. There is no claim of it being the telescope used in the discovery.

      The telescope was made by the discoverer of Pluto. Is that not enough "bragging rights" for you?

      --
      "We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
    4. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by dtl · · Score: 2, Informative

      Umm, not quite.

      Pluto was discovered at the the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell himself had made a calculation that suggested planet X existed beyond the orbit of neptune, however he died in 1916.

      Credit for the actual discovery of Pluto goes to Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. IIRC the planet was named after the greek god of wealth, rather than after Lowell.

    5. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by ReadParse · · Score: 4, Informative

      And Pluto was discovered by Percival Lowell, thus the "PL" symbol for the planet Pluto.

      No, it wasn't. Percival Lowell died in 1916, but he had started the search for "Planet X" before he died (and back when X was simply a variable instead of a marketing word directed at young people). Astronomers of the time knew that there was something affecting the orbits of Neptune and Uranus.

      Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, and that was where Tombaugh discovered Pluto, when he was a 24-year-old research assistant.

      It appears that the symbol of PL was chosen as an homage to Lowell.

      RP

    6. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by Mr+Guy · · Score: 4, Funny

      How we've all hungered for the elusive "Clyde Tombaugh" related bragging rights.

      --
      Never confuse volume with power.
    7. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by kalidasa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      PL is for Perceval Lowell, but Tombaugh was the discoverer. He used Lowell's calculations, which he trusted so much that he SCOURED the area where X should have been, and managed to find a KBO decades before he had any right to. Even so, it wasn't quite where Lowell said it would be. That's pure, unadulterated, good observing. That's why this is such an interesting scope: because it was built by a guy who was good enough to discover something very, very new.

    8. Re:Not the pluto 'scope by sweaterboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      According to Tombaugh The name Pluto was used mostly as a reference to the god pluto

      from this http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tom0int-2 interview...

      How did you name it Pluto?
      Pluto was the god of the underworld.
      The lower world, I guess it would be better to say -- of Hades. Pluto's out there far from the sun, where sunlight, at the average distance, is only one sixteen-hundredth as bright as on earth. Rather dark. And if you think of Hades as a dimly lighted place or outer darkness, it kind of fits in somewhat with the characteristics of Pluto probably, or of Hades. So it seemed fairly appropriate from that standpoint. And then when the satellite of Pluto was discovered in 1978 by Christy at the Naval Observatory, he named it Charon because his wife's name was Charlene. Charon was the boatman who ferried the souls of the dead across the river Styx to Pluto's realm of Hades. So the satellite name fits in very well with Pluto, you see.

      The almanac says that the name came from the initials Percival Lowell.

      Well, that was another reason, but not the main reason. Of course, they used the first two letters, Percival Lowell. But that was not the main reason. That was somewhat of a coincidence.

  6. Obvious conclusion.. by Linker3000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nasa purchases the telescope and lashes it to Hubble - hey presto, cheap fix, NASA saves money by recycling and everyone's happy.

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO
  7. More About Tombaugh and Pluto by amigoro · · Score: 5, Informative
    Here are some interesting links (and my attempt at KW)
    Clyde W. Tombaugh 1906-1997
    An Interview with Dr. Tombaugh
    Status of Pluto
    Image s of Pluto
    The New Planet(oid)

    Moderate this comment
    Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
    Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny

    --


    Nothing to see here
  8. Re:wow! by Agent+Orange · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  9. Slight Design Flaw by jazman · · Score: 2, Funny

    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?)

    1. Re:Slight Design Flaw by walter_kovacs · · Score: 3, Funny

      The trees are there to hide him from the lady down the road while he's watching her get undressed. I would have thought that'd be obvious to any self respecting nerd. ;-)

  10. You know, sad as it is... by Moonpie+Madness · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:You know, sad as it is... by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.
  11. OT: Pluto and Sedna as planets - why? by linoleo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  12. Well done. by CGP314 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clyde Tombaugh (the man who discovered Pluto)'s

    Best. Misuse of an apostrophe. Ever

    -Colin

  13. I have an uncle who grinds his own telescopes by Zog+The+Undeniable · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...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.
    1. Re:I have an uncle who grinds his own telescopes by aiabx · · Score: 2, Informative

      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?
  14. S&H by MagicDude · · Score: 4, Funny

    massive superstructure and 1-ton tube

    Shipping and handling are going to be a bitch.

  15. He forgot to include the details: by (trb001) · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...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

  16. I can just hear all the Astro geeks by RCO · · Score: 3, Funny

    "...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...'
  17. There are better large amateur scopes available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  18. No, Pluto was NOT discovered mathematically by StupendousMan · · Score: 4, Informative
    .... unlike Neptune.

    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:

    It is shown that the alleged 'unexplained anomalies in the motion of Uranus' disappear when one properly accounts for the correct value of the mass of Neptune and properly adjusts the orbit of Uranus to the observational data. .... there remains no need to hypothesize the existence of a tenth planet in the solar system.

    And yes, I am an astronomer.

    --
    Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
    mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
  19. Napoleon Carreau by YuheiCarreau · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

  20. I have looked through this one. by BCW2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:I have looked through this one. by pato+perez · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Last year, when Mars was near, NMSU had an open house and we got to look at Mars through a telescope that Tombaugh made using an missile casing (or something like that). I think it was a 12" or so but the staff there said that because it was so well made, you could see a clearer image than you could through some of their larger, more generic telescopes.

  21. Re:Belongs to a museum by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think this telescope of his is of more interest to museums than the one for sale.