Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT)
Lowell Observatory is building a major new reflecting telescope in partnership with Discovery Communications, located near Happy Jack, Arizona. This Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT), located within the Mogollon Rim Ranger District of the Coconino National Forest, is expected to be the fifth-largest telescope in the contiguous United States, and it will enable the astronomers of Lowell Observatory to enter new research areas deeper into outer space.
The DCT and the research carried out there will be the focus of ongoing informative and educational television programs about astronomy, the sciences, and technology to be telecast on the Discovery channels. The primary mirror of the Discovery Channel Telescope will be 4.28 meters (168.5 inches) in diameter. It will be supposely notable for its uncommon meniscus design for such a large mirror. This mirror was ground and polished into its parabolic shape at the Optical Fabrication and Engineering Facility of the College of Optical Sciences of the University of Arizona (in Tucson, Arizona).
Read more about this topic: Lowell Observatory
Famous quotes containing the words discovery, channel and/or telescope:
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Children belong in families, which, ideally, serve as a sanctuary and a cushion from the world at large. Parents belong to society and are a part of that greater world. Sometimes parents are a channel to the larger society, sometimes they are a shield from it. Ideally they act as filters, guiding their children and teaching them to avoid the tempting trash.”
—Louise Hart (20th century)
“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)