Large new‐technology optical telescopes proposed
AUG 01, 1981
DOI: 10.1063/1.2914686
The 5‐meter telescope on Mt. Palomar was designed and funded more than fifty years ago. Since its completion shortly after World War II, only one larger optical telescope has been built. And that instrument, the Soviet 6‐meter reflector, begun in 1966, has been a disappointment. In recent decades the emphasis in optical‐astronomy instrumentation has been primarily on the improvement of light detectors. Modern photon detectors are a hundred times more sensitive than the photographic plates originally exposed at Mt. Palomar.
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© 1981 American Institute of Physics
