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The Schmidt Telescope at Calar Alto Observatory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2016

K. Birkle ,
H. Belleman  and
H. Elsässer
K. Birkle
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institut für Astronomie, D-69117 Heidelberg, Koenigstuhl 17, Germany
H. Belleman
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institut für Astronomie, D-69117 Heidelberg, Koenigstuhl 17, Germany
H. Elsässer
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institut für Astronomie, D-69117 Heidelberg, Koenigstuhl 17, Germany

Extract

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The Schmidt telescope at Calar Alto Observatory, Spain, was installed there in 1980 by the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, and has been operated since then by this institute; originally it had been operational at the Hamburg Observatory since 1955. The corrector plate and mirror have 80 cm and 120 cm diameter respectively; focal length is 240 cm. A field 5.5 deg by 5.5 deg is photographed on 24 cm by 24 cm curved plates. Two objective prisms of 1.7 deg and 4.0 deg refractive angle are available (Heckmann 1955; Birkle 1984). Thousands of direct and spectral plates have been taken, mainly for the Hamburg Quasar Survey (Engels et al. 1988). Other observing programs referred e.g. to astrometry of comets, giving support to ESA's Giotto space encounters with comets Halley and Grigg-Skjellerup (Roeser et al. 1986; Morley 1992). Gradually, however, the number of plates increased showing image quality which did not correspond to the excellent performance of the telescope optics. Several technical improvements have therefore been installed to remove some obvious mechanical instability.

Type
Part One: Wide-Field Sky Surveys and Patrols
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 161: Astronomy from Wide-Field Imaging , 1994 , pp. 46 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1994 

References

Bastian, U., Birkle, K., Klare, G. and Roeser, S., 1986. Stern und Weltraum, 25, 638.Google Scholar
Birkle, K., 1984. ‘Astronomy with Schmidt type Telescopes’ Proc. 78th IAU Colloq., ed. Capaccioli, M., Reidel, Dordrecht, p. 203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engels, D., Groote, D., Hagen, H.J. and Reimers, D., 1988. Astron. Soc. Pac. Conf., 2, 143.Google Scholar
Heckmann, O., 1955. Mitt. Astron. Ges., 1954, 57.Google Scholar
Morley, T.A., 1986. Giotto Flight Dynamics Report, ESOC Darmstadt.Google Scholar
Morley, T., 1992. Proc. 43rd Congr. of the IAF, Washington.Google Scholar
Roeser, S., Bastian, U., Birkle, K. and Klare, G., 1986. Proc. 20th ESLAB Symp. on the Exploration of Halley's Comet, Heidelberg, ESA SP-250, p. 283.Google Scholar