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Arago Telescope
Arago telescope (''Lunette Arago'') is a 38 cm (15 inch) aperture refracting telescope at Paris Observatory, installed in 1857. Francois Arago ordered this telescope from the telescope making firm Lebreours in 1839, and after a protracted development was completed by 1855. The name ''Lunette Arago'' (Arago refractor) is a modern name for the telescope, and other large refractor of Paris observatory, is the one at Meudon. It has gone by a variety of names having to do with various aspects of the telescope, such as its aperture, or location on the East tower of the Paris observatory, or its equatorial mount made by Brunner. In one journal report it was called the 'east equatorial' for example, in another instance '38 cm refractor'. In French language it has been called the ''La lunette équatoriale de 38 cm de l'Observatoire de Paris''. The telescope had an objective lens 14 ''pouces'' across, which is a name for Paris Inches; this works out to about 38 cm (14.96 ...
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Minor Planet
According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor planet'', but that year's meeting reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies (SSSBs).Press release, IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes
International Astronomical Union, August 24, 2006. Accessed May 5, 2008.
Minor planets include asteroids (

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List Of Largest Optical Refracting Telescopes
Refracting telescopes use a lens to focus light. The largest refracting telescope in the world is the Yerkes Observatory 40 inch (102 cm) refractor, used for astronomical and scientific observation for over a century. The Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, which has an actual lens diameter of 43 inches, is technically then larger than the lens of the Yerkes, but only 39 inches are clear for the aperture, and is used today for solar observations .The next largest refractor telescopes are the James Lick telescope, and the Meudon Great Refractor. Most are classical great refractors, which used achromatic doublets on an equatorial mount. However, other large refractors include a 21st-century solar telescope which is not directly comparable because it uses a single element non-achromatic lens, and the short-lived Great Paris Exhibition Telescope of 1900. It used a 78-inch (200 cm) Focault siderostat for aiming light into the Image-forming optical system part of the telescope, ...
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List Of Largest Optical Telescopes Of The 19th Century
List of largest optical telescopes in the 19th century, are listings of what were, for the time period of the 19th century large optical telescopes. See List of largest optical telescopes in the 20th century for the 1900s. The list includes various refractor and reflector that were active some time between about 1799 to 1901. The main reflecting technology early on, speculum metal reflected some 2/3 of light, and also had higher maintenance due to tarnishing. Another technology were the 2-element refractors, which were extensively used in 19th century observatories despite their small apertures compared to the largest metal mirror, and later glass telescopes. The technology for silver-coated glass mirrors was developed in the mid-19th century, but was slow to catch on. A major technology advance of this time was the development of astrophotography, and some telescopes were tailored to this application. Also, a wide variety of scientific instruments were developed, such as for spec ...
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Paris Observatory - Arago Dome
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelligenc ...
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Nicol Prism
A Nicol prism is a type of polarizer, an optical device made from calcite crystal used to produce and analyse plane polarized light. It is made in such a way that it eliminates one of the rays by total internal reflection, i.e. the ordinary ray is eliminated and only the extraordinary ray is transmitted through the prism. It was the first type of polarizing prism, invented in 1828 by William Nicol (1770–1851) of Edinburgh. It consists of a rhombohedral crystal of Iceland spar (a variety of calcite) that has been cut at an angle of 68° with respect to the crystal axis, cut again diagonally, and then rejoined as shown, using a layer of transparent Canada balsam as a glue. Unpolarized light ray enters through the left face of the crystal, as shown in the diagram, and is split into two orthogonally polarized, differently directed rays by the birefringence property of calcite. The ''ordinary'' ray, or ''o''-ray, experiences a refractive index of ''n''o = 1.658 in the calcite and ...
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Quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical formula of SiO2. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth's continental crust, behind feldspar. Quartz exists in two forms, the normal α-quartz and the high-temperature β-quartz, both of which are chiral. The transformation from α-quartz to β-quartz takes place abruptly at . Since the transformation is accompanied by a significant change in volume, it can easily induce microfracturing of ceramics or rocks passing through this temperature threshold. There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are classified as gemstones. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia. Quartz is the mineral defining the val ...
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Photometer
A photometer is an instrument that measures the strength of electromagnetic radiation in the range from ultraviolet to infrared and including the visible spectrum. Most photometers convert light into an electric current using a photoresistor, photodiode, or photomultiplier. Photometers measure: *Illuminance *Irradiance *Light absorption * Scattering of light *Reflection of light *Fluorescence *Phosphorescence *Luminescence History Before electronic light sensitive elements were developed, photometry was done by estimation by the eye. The relative luminous flux of a source was compared with a standard source. The photometer is placed such that the illuminance from the source being investigated is equal to the standard source, as the human eye can judge equal illuminance. The relative luminous fluxes can then be calculated as the illuminance decreases proportionally to the inverse square of distance. A standard example of such a photometer consists of a piece of paper with an o ...
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Galilean Satellites
The Galilean moons (), or Galilean satellites, are the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They were first seen by Galileo Galilei in December 1609 or January 1610, and recognized by him as satellites of Jupiter in March 1610. They were the first objects found to orbit a planet other than the Earth. They are among the largest objects in the Solar System with the exception of the Sun and the eight planets, with a radius larger than any of the dwarf planets. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, and is even bigger than the planet Mercury, though only around half as massive. The three inner moons— Io, Europa, and Ganymede—are in a 4:2:1 orbital resonance with each other. While the Galilean moons are spherical, all of Jupiter's much smaller remaining moons have irregular forms because of their weaker self-gravitation. The Galilean moons were observed in either 1609 or 1610 when Galileo made improvements to his telescope, which enabl ...
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Asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. Of the roughly one million known asteroids the greatest number are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, approximately 2 to 4 AU from the Sun, in the main asteroid belt. Asteroids are generally classified to be of three types: C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are generally identified with carbonaceous, metallic, and silicaceous compositions, respectively. The size of asteroids varies greatly; the largest, Ceres, is almost across and qualifies as a dwarf planet. The total mass of all the asteroids combined is only 3% that of Earth's Moon. The majority of main belt asteroids follow slightly elliptical, stable orbits, revolving in the same direction as the Earth and taking from three to six years to comple ...
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Double Star
In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes. This occurs because the pair either forms a binary star (i.e. a binary system of stars in mutual orbit, gravitationally bound to each other) or is an ''optical double'', a chance line-of-sight alignment of two stars at different distances from the observer. Binary stars are important to stellar astronomers as knowledge of their motions allows direct calculation of stellar mass and other stellar parameters. The only (possible) case of "binary star" whose two components are separately visible to the naked eye is the case of Mizar and Alcor (though actually a multiple-star system), but it is not known for sure whether Mizar and Alcor are gravitationally bound. Since the beginning of the 1780s, both professional and amateur double star observers have telescopically measured the distances and angles between d ...
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Paris Observatory 04
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intellige ...
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