[ATM] Clyde Tombaugh's Homemade Scope

[Michael Lindner <mikell@optonline.net>]

Notices of items for sale are not generally appropriate for this list. If in 
doubt, please conact me. That's what Shawn McHatten and several others did 
about this item. It is such a fabulous piece of ATM history, I'm making an 
exception. I can only hope a Smithsonian curator buys it, rather than a scrap 
dealer. Thanks, guys.

<< This 16-inch telescope was Clyde Tombaugh's biggest effort. Although the
mirror was completed around 1944, heavy work on the metal superstructure did
not begin in earnest until about 1957 and the telescope finally saw first
light in Las Cruces around 1960. Its primary system is a 16-inch f/10 mirror
hand-ground, figured, and completed by the discoverer of Pluto himself. The
mirror is outstanding; during the early 1980s, Tombaugh and David Levy used
an 8mm eyepiece (which gives a magnification of 524) to observe the spokes
in Saturn's rings with it. The telescope was designed to hold both a 16-inch
f/10 mirror and a shorter-focus 18-inch f/6 mirror (not included?) There is
also a rare and beautiful weight-driven sidereal clock. Clyde Tombaugh spent
some 1500 hours on this project, 100 of which were on the mirror alone. The
massive tube contains 1 ton of steel; he drilled through the equivalent of
20 feet of steel for the bolts. Ernest inquiries only please! Patsy Tombaugh
c/o David Levy. >>

http://www.astromart.com/viewad.asp?cid=256963

Clear skies.
-- 
Michael Lindner
http://www.starastronomy.org *** http://home.att.net/~mikel
http://www.atmsite.org *** http://www.atmlist.net

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