GIANT TELESCOPE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 5 January 1929, Page 9

GIANT TELESCOPE

largest telescope in the world, planned to provide four times. the power of the great Hooker telescope on Mt. Wilson, is to .he erected on a California mountain top not \et designated. Tire California Institute of Technology has announced that funds have been made, available for its construction, and that work on the 200inch reflector with which it will be equipped will begin within a few months. The telescope and a laboratory are a gift to the institute from the International Education •Board, with headquarters at New York. The amount of money involved was not disclosed, but it would of necessity be larger than that required to build the Hooker telescope, which cost 600,000 dollars.

It is expected that the new instrument will penetrate millions of light years into space, bringing under observation hundreds of millions of now unseen stars and nebulae and opening a vast unexplored field of astronomical knowledge, .besides bringing much nearer objects now visible with telescopes. Approximately 1,600,000,000 stellar objects are within the range of the Hooker telescope. The 200-inch

PLANNED FOR CALIFORNIA

reflector will double the size and quadruple tlie power of the Hooker telescope. Another important feature contemplated for the immense instrument is a -K)-l'oot Miehelson stellar interferometer, which measures the diameter ol stars. By means of this auxiliary it is hoped to measure the binary stars, which nr? two sons revolving about each other. If this information is obtainable, astronomers said, men may be in a fair way to discover how such worlds are formed. The announcement declares that the new telescope ‘‘should solve many problems of physics or chemistry that depend upon the enormous masses or temperatures, or upon the immense density or extreme tenuity exhibited by celestial bodies in which experiments exceeding the capacity of any terrestrial laboratory are constantly in progress.” The reflector will be of fused quartz, a substance that expands and contracts less than glass in changes of temperature, iand which therefore preserves a more perfect surface. In polishing, a 200-inch glass could be ground but ten minutes a day because of heating, while the fused quartz can be ground continuously'.