The Shuckburgh telescope or Shuckburgh equatorial refracting telescope was a diameter

aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An ...

telescope on an equatorial mount completed in 1791 for Sir George Shuckburgh (1751–1804) in Warwickshire, England, and built by British instrument maker Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800)... The Shuckburgh telescope is described o
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It was transferred to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in 1811 and the

London Science Museum The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded ...

in 1929. Even though it has sometimes not been regarded as particularly successful, its design was influential. It was one of the larger

achromatic doublet An achromatic lens or achromat is a lens that is designed to limit the effects of chromatic and spherical aberration. Achromatic lenses are corrected to bring two wavelengths (typically red and blue) into focus on the same plane. The most comm ...

telescopes at the time, and one of the largest to have an equatorial mount. It was also known as the eastern equatorial for its location. It was pictured in the Rees Cyclopedia of the early 1800s. It was early pictured in ''Philosophical Transactions'', published in 1793. At the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, it was for a time installed in the North Dome, although this had a Sky view partially obscured by the Octagon room. It was earlier installed as an alt-az mount in the South dome at Greenwich, which in 1838 is where the then-new 6.7 inch aperture Sheepshanks refractor was installed. The telescope tube is 5 feet four inches long (about 1.6 meters). The focal length was the same for this telescope, with object glass being doublet of 4.1 inch (~10.4 cm) aperture. Shuckburgh placed an order with Ramsden for the telescope in 1781, and it was delivered for his observatory ten years later. He also ordered a clock from John Arnold & Son to use with the telescope. The telescope was installed at Shuckburgh Hall, in

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Av ...

, United Kingdom.

Observations

The Shuckburgh/ Eastern telescope was used for the 1832

transit of Mercury frameless, upright=0.5 A transit of Mercury across the Sun takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet. During a transit, Mercury appears as a tiny black dot moving across the Sun as the planet obs ...

equipped with a micrometer by Dollond. By observing the transit in combination with timing it and taking measures, a diameter for the planet was taken. They also reported the peculiar effects that they compared to pressing a coin into the Sun. The observer remarked: The Shuckburgh and the western equatorial at Greenwich are recorded as having been used for observations of the 1835 apparition of

Halley's Comet Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the on ...

. The Shuckburgh, also called the "Eastern Equatorial" at the time Halley's comet was sometimes used with a micrometer microscope. For the observations of Halley's 1835, the Transit and Arnold 1 and 2 clocks were used. Observations were recorded in August, September, and October, but it could not view the comet after October 19, because its view was blocked by another part of the observatory building. The Shuckburgh is also reported to have been used for observing the

occultation An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden from the observer by another object that passes between them. The term is often used in astronomy, but can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks ...

of stars by the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

and observing the

moons of Jupiter There are 82 known moons of Jupiter, not counting a number of moonlets likely shed from the inner moons. All together, they form a satellite system which is called the Jovian system. The most massive of the moons are the four Galilean moons: ...

References

External links

Image of Shuckburgh's telescope at London Science Museum
an
print of the telescope, general view
Ingenious

from {{citation, title=Cyclopaedia of Telescope Makers Part 6 (Sin-Syk), last=Andrews, first=A. D., journal=Irish Astronomical Journal, year=1996, volume=23, issue=2, pages=215–242, bibcode=1996IrAJ...23..215A Optical telescopes Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Observations

See also

References

External links