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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."
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.
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
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.
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
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
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
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
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.
I always thought that there was a plutonic friendship between our two worlds!
> 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
Clyde Tombaugh (the man who discovered Pluto)'s
Best. Misuse of an apostrophe. Ever
-Colin
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.
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. ;-)
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
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.
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.
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