Pluto Telescope

[beka]

Hi All,

After having imaged Pluto recently, I was interested in finding out the type of telescope used in its discovery. Reading the description at The Pluto Telescope its seems to be a 13" f5 triplet refractor (APO?) with a 17" sized focal plane!!! I didn't know they used such large plates for astrophotography. It looks like modern CCD chips still have some way to go.

Cheers!

 

[Alien 13]

It is surprising at first but explains why the big 200 inch with its large plates can be matched FOV wise with a small APO and CCD..

Alan

[callump]

The LSST will have a 64cm diameter CCD camera - 3.2 gigapixels.

https://www.lsst.org/about/camera

/callump

[Horwig]

On 09/11/2017 at 12:10, callump said:

The LSST will have a 64cm diameter CCD camera - 3.2 gigapixels.

https://www.lsst.org/about/camera

/callump

Thanks for reminding me of the LSST, been reading their excellent website, been trying to work out the focal length of the beast. Why are people so shy of giving this figure these days. In the days of observational astronomy, I understand that it was diameter that ruled, but for CCD use, it would be nice to know the FL, they give the CCD pixel size, but I can't see an arc second per pixel anywhere, I can find the target diameter and angular view, seems to suggest an f5.2 system, so an FL of 44 meters. Am I anywhere near?

H

 

[Horwig]

1 hour ago, Horwig said:

I can find the target diameter and angular view, seems to suggest an f5.2 system, so an FL of 44 meters. Am I anywhere near?

H

 

OOOPS! Have looked again at my calcs, it would explain why I had problems with maths, system looks more like F1.24, so an FL of 10.5meters. (Actually, I eventually found the the f ratio in the technical page of the camera system)

Going back to the OP, in the seventies, my first telescope was a 3inch f13 doublet. On taking the objective out of its tube, and building a large carboard box arrangement, it would give an image circle of about six inches.

Huw