The James Gregory Telescope was constructed in 1962 by the

University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...

. It is of a Schmidt-Cassegrain design and is fitted with a

CCD CCD may refer to: Science and technology * Charge-coupled device, an electronic light sensor used in various devices including digital cameras * .ccd, the filename extension for CloneCD's CD image file * Carbonate compensation depth, a property ...

camera. The telescope has very large field of view, compared even to regular 'wide field' designs, and can view 5 square degrees. The James Gregory Telescope is the largest working

optical telescope An optical telescope gathers and focus (optics), focuses light mainly from the visible spectrum, visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, to create a magnification, magnified image for direct visual inspection, to make a photograph, or to co ...

in the UK and is still used by the School of Physics and Astronomy for research in collaborative projects such as

SuperWASP WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using transit photometry. The array of robotic telescopes aims to survey the entire sky ...

and the study of

super massive black holes A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions, of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical o ...

and their impact on galaxy structure. The James Gregory Telescope is named after the Scottish mathematician, astronomer and University academic James Gregory, who invented the design

Gregorian telescope The Gregorian telescope is a type of reflecting telescope designed by Scottish mathematician and astronomer James Gregory in the 17th century, and first built in 1673 by Robert Hooke. James Gregory was a contemporary of Isaac Newton, and both ...

. This was the first design for a reflecting telescope, and pre-dates Newton's design; however Newton is better known as he actually produced a functioning example. (see

Newton's reflector The first reflecting telescope built by Sir Isaac Newton in 1668 is a landmark in the history of telescopes, being the first known reflecting telescope. It was the prototype for a design that later came to be called the Newtonian telescope. Ther ...

) As of 2018, this telescope is recognized as the largest telescope in operation in the United Kingdom. It is also recognized as the largest Schmidt-Cassegrain. This design was developed by Baker and Linfoot, and a half-scale model was also made during its development. It was estimated that the telescope cost about £1 million to manufacture, in early 21st-century currency. The telescope uses both a mirror and corrector, and is capable up to 16 degrees but was adjusted after it came online in 1962. The telescope has an aperture of 37 inches, but in the current setup about 33 inches of aperture are used.

References

{{University of St Andrews Optical telescopes Astronomical observatories in Scotland University of St Andrews

See also

References