The Sheepshanks Equatorial Telescope was a aperture

refracting telescope A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens (optics), lens as its objective (optics), objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptrics, dioptric telescope). The refracting telescope d ...

installed in 1838 at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The telescope was donated to the observatory by the astronomer Richard Sheepshanks. The telescope had a doublet objective lens made by Cauchoix of Paris. Originally it was mounted on a clockwork driven equatorial mounting by the Grubb Telescope Company on a stone pillar. From 1835 to 1963 it was mounted in Greenwich Observatory's Sheepshanks Dome (located between the later Great Equatorial Building and the

Prime Meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrarily chosen meridian (geography), meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. On a spheroid, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian ...

); from 1963 to 1982 it was mounted in the Altazimuth Pavilion. In the early 1980s it was placed in storage. The focal length of the telescope has been quoted as in one source, but according to another it is . The telescope tube was made of wood. An 1840 report from the Observatory noted of the new Sheepshanks telescope: Still in service over half a century later, an 1896 report by W. H. M. Christie had this to say about the Sheepshanks at that time: At one time the Sheepshanks refractor was the largest aperture telescope at Greenwich. One of the instruments for the telescope was a wire micrometer.

Observations

One of its observations was of

Comet Encke Comet Encke , or Encke's Comet (official designation: 2P/Encke), is a periodic comet that completes an orbit of the Sun once every 3.3 years. (This is the shortest period of a reasonably bright comet; the faint main-belt comet 311P/PanSTARRS has ...

. The Sheepshanks was used to observe the Moon occulting stars in 1905. Some of the stars that were observed include Bradley 687, 130 Tauri, and 26 Geminorum- among others. In addition to the

occultation An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden from the observer by another object that passes between them. The term is often used in astronomy, but can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks f ...

of stars by the Moon, the Sheepshanks equatorial is also reported to have been used to observe the

moons of Jupiter There are 97 Natural satellite, moons of Jupiter with confirmed orbits . This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that ...

Disambiguation

There are other telescopes bearing the name Sheepshanks, for example the Sheepshanks telescope No 3; this was a telescope of 4.6 inches aperture and 5 feet of focal length, used with a spectroscope in the 1860s. There was also a Sheepshanks telescope at Cambridge, completed in 1898.

References

{{Cite journal , author=William Henry Maloney Christie , year=1896 , title=Greenwich Astronomical Observations 1893 , journal=Greenwich Observations in Astronomy, Magnetism and Meteorology Made at the Royal Observatory , volume=55 , page=17 , bibcode=1896GOAMM..55....1C , url=https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1896GOAMM..55....1C/0000034.000.html , access-date=2019-10-31

External links

Article about Sheepshanks equatorial19th century watercolour painting showing Sheepshanks dome
Refracting telescopes Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Observations

Disambiguation

See also

References

External links