The Otto Struve Telescope was the first major

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe ...

to be built at

McDonald Observatory McDonald Observatory is an astronomical observatory located near unincorporated community of Fort Davis in Jeff Davis County, Texas, United States. The facility is located on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, with additional facil ...

. Located in the

Davis Mountains The Davis Mountains, originally known as Limpia Mountains, are a range of mountains in West Texas, located near Fort Davis, after which they are named. The fort was named for then United States Secretary of War and later Confederate President Je ...

in West

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, the Otto Struve Telescope was designed by

Warner & Swasey Company The Warner & Swasey Company was an American manufacturer of machine tools, instruments, and special machinery. It operated as an independent business firm, based in Cleveland, from its founding in 1880 until its acquisition in 1980. It was fo ...

and constructed between 1933 and 1939 by the Paterson-Leitch Company. Its mirror was the second largest in the world at the time. It was named after the Russian-American astronomer

Otto Struve Otto Struve (August 12, 1897 – April 6, 1963) was a Russian-American astronomer of Baltic German origins. In Russian, his name is sometimes given as Otto Lyudvigovich Struve (Отто Людвигович Струве); however, he spent most o ...

in 1966, three years after his death; Struve had been the director of McDonald Observatory from 1932–1950. The Davis Mountains is an excellent location for astronomical research because of the clear dry air and moderately high elevation. The remote nature of the facility proved to be a significant challenge in transporting such a large mirror. It was a very precarious journey for the Otto Struve Telescope's mirror to this remote part of Texas and up to the top of Mount Locke. The mirror was transported from the local town of Fort Davis up the mountain by Carleton D. Wilson, owner of a local trucking company, while locals cheered as they looked on. The Otto Struve telescope is still in use today. It is updated with modern imaging detectors allowing astronomers to conduct many types of research.

Noted applications and Discoveries

The telescope was one of two used to set up and define the

Johnson Johnson is a surname of Anglo-Norman origin meaning "Son of John". It is the second most common in the United States and 154th most common in the world. As a common family name in Scotland, Johnson is occasionally a variation of ''Johnston'', a ...

- Morgan

UBV photometric system The UBV photometric system (from ''Ultraviolet, Blue, Visual''), also called the Johnson system (or Johnson-Morgan system), is a photometric system usually employed for classifying stars according to their colors. It was the first standardized p ...

. In 1949, G. Kuiper of Yerkes Observatory discovered a new moon of planet

Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times ...

, named

Nereid In Greek mythology, the Nereids or Nereides ( ; grc, Νηρηΐδες, Nērēḯdes; , also Νημερτές) are sea nymphs (female spirits of sea waters), the 50 daughters of the 'Old Man of the Sea' Nereus and the Oceanids, Oceanid Doris ...

. The moon was discovered on

photographic plates Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography, and were still used in some communities up until the late 20th century. The light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated on a glass plate, typically thinn ...

taken in a search for moons of Neptune.

Contemporaries on commissioning

The Otto Struve telescope saw first light in 1939, behind the 100-inch Hooker telescope and ahead of two large

British Commonwealth The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Co ...

telescopes, both in Canada. Many competing projects were delayed due to the war in the early 1940s. Four largest telescopes in 1939:

Notes

References

External links

{{Commons category
"Pour Three Ton Telescope Mirror."
''Popular Science'', April 1934, p. 41.
Science: The 82-Inch McDonald Telescope (1939)
industrial film capturing the construction and design of the Otto Struve Telescope, Texas Archive of the Moving Image. Telescopes University of Texas at Austin

Noted applications and Discoveries

Contemporaries on commissioning

See also

Notes

References

External links