What are some famous telescopes

Exploring the Universe: A Look at Some of the World's Most Famous Telescopes

These massive devices allow us to explore the universe in ways that would otherwise be impossible, and they've helped us make some truly amazing discoveries over the years. Here's a look at how these powerful tools work and some of the most incredible things they've helped us learn about our place in the cosmos.

Large telescopes are used to study distant objects in space. They can also be used to collect data about our own planet, including its atmosphere and climate.

Some of the largest Earth-based telescopes include the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, Keck Observatory, and Subaru Telescope. These massive instruments allow astronomers to see farther into space than ever before possible.

Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is a large telescope located at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas. The HET is operated by a consortium of eleven research institutions.

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope was originally conceived as a 4m aperture telescope design with an innovative alt-azimuth mount to keep costs down.  However, when first proposed in 1987 the cost was still estimated at $30 million so the project was shelved. In 1994, Principal Investigator Harold Gullixson revived the project with the help of William Estrada and Funding from MICA/TIFR came through in 1996 for an automated 10-meter prototype called MiniMOS that would be used as prove of concept for HET's mirror construction techniques. After another failed attempt to get funding in 1997, finally secured funds from UTA foundation along with Firm development commitments from L3 Communications gave them enough money to actually build Het starting 2001.   Construction on HET began early 2001 and First light was achieved on September 2005 using all 9 segments of secondary mirrors which had yet to be aluminized. Completion occurred late 2007 after 15 years of effort by many people including graduate students working towards their PhDs.

Instrumentation for HET includes the Visible spectrograph (VIRUS), Near Infrared Echelle Spectrograph (NRES), High Resolution Imaging camera(HiR1C), Medium Resolution Imaging camera 3 (MRic3) , Wide field imaging cameras 1 & 2 (WFI1&2).

Keck Observatory

Keck Observatory is a world-renowned astronomical research facility located on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The twin 10-meter (34 foot) diameter telescopes are among the largest and most technologically advanced optical/infrared telescopes in the world. Keck Observatory's vision is to advance humanity's understanding of our place in the universe through innovative astronomical research and public outreach programs.

The two Kecks are reflectors; each has a primary mirror made up of 36 hexagonal segments that work together as one piece. When combined, they give the telescope an area equivalent to that of a single 11.8-meter (39 foot) dish - making them some of the largest mirrors ever used for astronomy! The secondary mirrors focus light onto three scientific instruments called spectrographs, which spread out incoming light into its component colors so astronomers can study it in detail. One other instrument, called a laser guide star system, creates an artificial "guide star" by shining an extremely bright laser beam into Earth's upper atmosphere. This allows astronomers to use adaptive optics to cancel out much of the blurring effects caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere, providing near-perfect images across a wide field-of-view.

Since opening in 1993, Keck Observatory has been at forefront of astronomical discovery, helping scientists answer some fundamental questions about our place in cosmos: How did galaxies form and evolve? What is dark matter? What are supermassive black holes? Are there other planets like Earth out there? And perhaps most importantly - what is the fate of our Universe?

Located atop Mauna Kea—the highest point within Hawaiian Islands chain—Keck I & II offer unparalleled access to clear tropical skies that allow these perpetually busy ‘eyes on sky’ deep views into night.,  In little more than two decades since their debut publications from WFIRST will continue this tradition built upon rich partnership between NSF Division Astronomical Sciences, NASA Ames Research Center, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp, Blue Origin LLC, Caltech University, Carnegie Institution Department Physics & Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Space Telescope Science Institute.

Subaru Telescope

Subaru Telescope is a Japanese astronomical telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. Its primary mirror has a diameter of 8.2 meters (27 feet), making it one of the largest optical telescopes in the world.

The Subaru Telescope began operations in 1999 and was officially inaugurated in 2002. It is named after the open star cluster called Messier 45, or the Pleiades, which can be seen by naked eye and which also happens to be one of targets visible from Mauna Kea.

The instrumentation suite available on Subaru includes imagers, spectrographs, and integral-field units covering wavelengths from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. These are used for studies ranging from exoplanets and circumstellar disks around young stars similar to our solar system's formation environment, out to some of the most distant galaxies in our Universe whose light started traveling towards us more than 13 billion years ago.

In September 2018 researchers using data from Subaru announced that they had discovered 83 quasars powered by supermassive black holes dating back to when the universe was only 770 million years old— just 5% its current age. This discovery set a new record for both highest redshift and farthest distance for known quasars powered by supermassive black holes.

Mount Palomar telescope

The Mount Palomar telescope is the largest in the world.

The Mount Palomar telescope has a primary mirror that is 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter. This makes it the largest optical reflecting telescope in existence. When it was completed in 1947, it became the largest telescope ever made. The previous record holder had been the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, which was completed in 1917. In terms of weight, however, the new instrument outweighed its predecessor by nearly four times!

The enormous size of this reflector gives it exceptional light grasp and resolving power. Under good seeing conditions, fine details as small as 0.1 arcsecond can be observed on astronomical objects—this could reveal surface features as small as 10 miles (16 kilometers) across on Jupiter! Even under poor atmospheric conditions fairly faint objects can still be studied with this tremendous.