The Schmidt Telescope
The 1.2m Schmidt telescope was built to complement the AAT and officially began operations in August 1973. It was designed for survey astronomy, having an extremely large field-of-view which is more than 12 times the apparent diameter of the moon. The telescope was operated by the Schmidt Telescope Unit of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh until 1988, when it was agreed that control would be handed over to the AAO. The Schmidt has undertaken much notable work, including blue and red photographic surveys of the southern sky and the 6dF Galaxy Survey. Its multi-object spectroscopic capability is currently being exploited to perform the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) survey.
Read more about this topic: Australian Astronomical Observatory
Famous quotes containing the word telescope:
“The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)