There now some slightly bigger telescopes in the Pacific area.

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The Amateur Telescope Maker’s Page

AT a cash outlay of $300, boys at a Hawaiian school built a 20-inch reflecting telescope which has been valued at $20,000. It is said to be one of the largest telescopes in the Pacific area. With the exception of the grinding of the mirror, all the work was done by the students of the Kamehameha school, a private grammar school named after Hawaii’s greatest king. The f-6 mirror was donated by a government employee who ground it himself, taking six months for the job.
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This article is interesting for a number of reasons. One of the most interesting is that M.L Humasen was a high-school dropout who got a job as a janitor at Mt. Wilson Observatory where the was later made a member of the astronomical staff . He went on to take many of the observation that Edwin Hubble used to formulate Hubble’s Law. It’s odd that in the interview Humasen says he doesn’t believe the universe is “blowing up” which is precisely what Hubble’s Law says, though a bit less dramatically.

I’m a little confused about calling the object a star. N.G.C 4800 is actually a galaxy. Hubble was the one who proved, in the early 1920′s that these distant objects were outside the Milky Way and were in fact galaxies. Since they also refer to it as a nebula (which was sort of a catch-all term for blurry stellar objects at the time) I’m going to guess that it was just the reporter who decided it was a star.

I don’t know enough about solar spectra to be sure, but it seems like you wouldn’t be able to make a direct comparison of the spectra from a whole galaxy to that of one star. Incidentally N.G.C 4800 is actually 97.14 million light years away not the 50 million the article states.

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Photographs STAR Moving 4800 MILES A SECOND

Sitting with his eye glued to a telescopic camera for 45 hours, M. L. Humason, Mt. Wilson astronomer, has succeeded in setting a record for long distance photographs. The nebula on which he trained his camera is 50,000,000 light years away from the earth.

FOR 45 hours in total darkness, Milton L. Humason, member of the astronomical staff at the Mt. Wilson observatory at Pasadena, California, trained the world’s largest telescope toward a far distant point in the heavens and obtained a photograph of a nebula 50,000,000 light years away from the earth—a total of 300 quintillion miles.
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Signals from the Stars

EVER since it was first indicated that the static present in the output of radio receivers was due in part to physical disturbances on the sun a new field of research has attracted popular scientific interest. It is radio astronomy, whose equipment and observers listen not to man made responses, but instead to continuous “static” from the stars. That cosmic radio noise exists was realized as far back as 1931. Early records proved it to be most intense when receivers probed toward the Milky Way, or lengthwise through our enormous watch-shaped galaxy. Read the rest of this entry »

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Science Builds Greatest Telescope

Monster 200-inch “eye” will reveal hitherto unknown secrets of the universe and enrich man’s knowledge of life on earth.

by John Edwin Hogg

Nine years ago Palomar Mountain was a little-known mass of rock and earth in San Diego county, California. Being only 6,129 feet high, it is a mere foothill without even the distinction of altitude in a state where scores of perpetually snow-clad peaks rise to perpendicular heights of nearly three miles. A few Californians knew it as a good place to go deer hunting. Others, well-versed in state lore, had heard of it as the home of Nigger Nate, a fugitive slave who for many years lived the life of a recluse far up on Palomar’s forested slopes. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s the Biggest… It’s the Newest… But Palomar Telescope Won’t See Far Enough!

BY LOGAN REAVIS

SOME time this year an astronomer will peer for the first time through the largest telescope the world has ever known—will penetrate space to a distance of two billion light years farther than the eye of man has ever explored.

But he won’t see far enough.
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Sure, it’s a “telescope”.

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German Telescope is UNIQUE in Design

ANEW departure in the way of design and operation of high power telescopes has been effected at the Treptow astronomical observatory, near Berlin, which is one of the best in Germany. Of a design that is distinctly unique—it might be called modernistic—the new mammoth telescope, shown in the photo at the left, has many features that add immensely to the facility of star-gazing.
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The WORLD’S BIGGEST EYE

A GROUP of American astronomers soon will experience one of the greatest scientific thrills of the century. On the night the world’s most tremendous telescope is completed they will take turns peering into a tiny, brilliant eyepiece.

Looking at the heavens with the aid of the most extraordinary piece of glass ever poured, they may make discoveries that will completely change man’s conception of the universe.

After years of research the men in charge of building the monster instrument for the California Institute of Technology are now at work. Astronomers estimate that the mirror, 360,000 times more powerful than the human eye, will magnify the moon and planets 10,000 times. Read the rest of this entry »

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200 INCH TELESCOPE Is Greatest Engine of Science

by WILLIAM JENNINGS

COOLING slowly in a brick igloo in Corning, N. Y., is a lake of 34 tons of molten glass, representing the greatest scientific project ever attempted by man. It took six years to reach this stage of the great task and it will be more than four more years before its success is known.

From far and wide scientists came to see the formation of this huge lake of glass— the pouring of the 200-inch telescope mirror that is expected to reach out into the unknown depths of the universe.

The work has hardly begun with the pouring of the mirror. Countless problems still face the scientists who have undertaken the task.
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No, this article is not about a particularly ambitious band of paparazzi.

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Photographing Stars with a Rocket

WILL science ever be able to take photographs of the spectra of the sun and other stars with cameras far outside the range of the earth’s atmosphere? Speculation on this possibility has been renewed by the recent experiments of Prof. Robert H. Goddard, of Worcester, Mass., in launching rockets of his own design powered with a secret liquid propellant which he invented.

Contrary to popular belief, Prof. Goddard has no intention of occupying one of his rockets on a fantastic journey to the moon. As pointed out by Dr. C. G. Abbott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, a close friend of Professor Goddard, the professor’s experiments are directed toward a scientific exploration of the upper heavens at distances now far beyond the reach of man.
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THE POOR MAN’S TELESCOPE

AS EVERY astronomer knows, a steady mounting is a must when using high magnification. Generally, to obtain the required steadiness, it has been considered necessary to build a strong, heavy instrument, made with high precision, often mounted on concrete piers. The disadvantage of such instruments, in their lack of portability, has led us to develop the six-inch reflecting telescope and mounting shown here. We feel it combines features especially suited to the needs of the amateur. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a contemporary account of the discovery of Pluto. At the time it had not yet been named. The article lists Atlas, Prometheus, and Pluto as suggested possibilities.

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How They Trailed a New Planet

Study of many photos of stars disclosed to a farm boy what may prove a new world where a famous astronomer said it would be. Old theories are upset by find.

By

ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC

A NEW planet has been announced. Out in space, four billion miles beyond the globe we live on, a yellowish object, a little larger than the earth, swings in a vast circle about the sun; a frigid little world, bathed in the dim light of perpetual dusk. Its discovery is called the most important event in astronomy in nearly a hundred years.

A new planet is not found every day. As many of us learned in school, a planet is one of the exclusive company of heavenly bodies that get their light and heat from the sun. They swing about it, as the earth does, in great circular paths, or orbits. These earthlike worlds are so few in number that they may be counted on the fingers.
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2,000-Inch TELESCOPE May Reveal End of Universe

Proposed photo-electric instrument may bring the moon within a mile of the earth, solve the mystery of life on the planets and reveal the gigantic sun that holds the universe together. Here Dr. Luyten tells of discoveries awaiting the great telescope.

by DR. W. J. LUYTEN
Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota

REPORTS that Dr. Francois Henroteau, astronomer at the Dominion Observatory at Ottawa, is planning a new super-telescope which will far surpass in power all existing instruments, has stirred the imagination of scientists and laymen alike. Even the new 200-inch reflector still under construction for the Mt. Wilson Observatory will be dwarfed by Dr. Henro-teau’s projected giant, which is expected to equal the lightgathering power of a 2,000-inch mirror.
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