New Discovery Channel telescope (DCT)

[floppygoose]

It was fascinating to watch the Discovery Channel program last night on the building of the new DCT telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona.

It cost $53million - the primary mirror (4.3m) cost $6.5million, and was made at the Corning glass factory in New York - It took 7 years to make M1 alone, and then a further 3 years for the polishing. The secondary mirror was tiny at 1.5m. It cracked during the manufacture and had to be scrapped and started again. This delay messed up the planned observation of Kuiper belt objects using a new spectograph which had been built. The focusing mechanism is awesome - it has 120 actuators mounted on the back of the primary mirror for tracking / auto-focusing, and an instrument cube with 5 integrated instantly switchable systems. It was getting fantasic images less than 20 minutes after going on-line, and there was not a coud in sight!

Phil

[tingting44]

ive watched that back a few times on record it is indeed one fasinating telescope isnt it mate!! it made me cringe when they broke the secondary mirror tho with the light weighting

if you were a billionaire you would have to build your own space telescope wouldnt you!

clear skies

Martin

[floppygoose]

I had cleared my shed out ready for a scope setup Martin, but I think I will give up and put the bike's back in having watched that!

Phil

[bomberbaz]

Awesome pictures to be viewed, incredible

http://www.lowell.edu/dct_photos_firstlight.php

Baz

[ubertank]

I really enjoyed this documentary. The level of precision in the primary mirror astonished me.

An amazing piece of equipment and a wonderful example of what we are capable of in this day and age.

[Andrew-77]

Hm! Perhaps National Geographic should take a leaf out of the Discovery Channel's book. NG's telescopes are rubbish.

What? Oh...

[nederman63]

It's incredible the way they polished that huge mirror, no surprise the cost was so high.

[Sp@ce_d]

I really enjoyed this documentary. The level of precision in the primary mirror astonished me.

An amazing piece of equipment and a wonderful example of what we are capable of in this day and age.

Isn't this the one they discovered that the centre was actually offset and had to make a correction plate for or start again?

[LukeSkywatcher]

Isn't this the one they discovered that the centre was actually offset and had to make a correction plate for or start again?

IIRC...........it was something like that (centre was offset a bit). To make a new mirror would have taken something like 3-5 yrs more and cost millions more. I think they discovered a quick fix and were only a few months behind schedule and not a lot of extra cost.