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Telescope - Telescope mountings

Telescope - Telescope mountings: Encyclopedia II - Telescope - Telescope mountings

A simple telescope mount is an altitude-azimuth or altazimuth mount. It is similar to that of a surveying transit. A fork rotates in azimuth (in the horizontal plane), and bearings on the tips of the fork allow the telescope to vary in altitude (in a vertical plane). A Dobsonian mount is a type of altazimuth mount which has proven to be very popular as it is simple and inexpensive. When using an altazimuth for astronomy, both axes must be continuously adjusted to compensate for the Earth's rotation. Even if this i ...

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Telescope, Telescope - History, Telescope - Types, Telescope - Telescope mountings, Telescope - Research telescopes, Telescope - Imperfect images, Telescope - The five Seidel aberrations, Telescope - The chromatic aberrations, Telescope - Famous optical telescopes, Telescope - Related lists

Telescope, Telescope - Famous optical telescopes, Telescope - History, Telescope - Imperfect images, Telescope - Related lists, Telescope - Research telescopes, Telescope - Telescope mountings, Telescope - The chromatic aberrations, Telescope - The five Seidel aberrations, Telescope - Types, Amateur telescope making, Aperture synthesis, Depth of field, Eyepiece, First light, F-number, History of telescopes, Maksutov telescope, Microscope, Optical telescope, Radio telescope, Reflector telescope, Refracting telescope, Robotic telescope, Timeline of telescopes, observatories, and observing technology

Telescope: Encyclopedia II - Telescope - Telescope mountings

Telescope - Telescope mountings

A simple telescope mount is an altitude-azimuth or altazimuth mount. It is similar to that of a surveying transit. A fork rotates in azimuth (in the horizontal plane), and bearings on the tips of the fork allow the telescope to vary in altitude (in a vertical plane). A Dobsonian mount is a type of altazimuth mount which has proven to be very popular as it is simple and inexpensive.

When using an altazimuth for astronomy, both axes must be continuously adjusted to compensate for the Earth's rotation. Even if this is done by computer control, the image rotates at a rate that varies depending on the angle of the target from the celestial pole. The last effect makes an altazimuth mount especially impractical for long-exposure photography with small telescopes.

The preferred solution for small astronomical telescopes is to tip the altazimuth mount so that the azimuth axis is parallel with the axis of the Earth's rotation. This is known as an equatorial mount.

Modern large telescopes use computer-controlled altazimuth mounts, and for long exposures they rotate the instruments or have variable-rate image rotators in an image of the telescope pupil.

There are mountings even simpler than altazimuth, typically used for specialized instruments. For example:

meridian transit (altitude only)
fixed with movable plane mirror for solar observing
ball-and-socket (ancient and useless for astronomy).

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10th century, 1608, 1609, 1888, 1919, 2002, 2005, Dobsonian mount, altitude-azimuth or altazimuth mount, equatorial mount, Airy disc, Amateur telescope making, Aperture Masking Interferometry, Aperture synthesis, Arabs, As of 2005, Astigmatism, Atacama desert, CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy) array, Cassegrain telescope, Chile, Coma, Dawes limit, Depth of field, Earth, Edwin Hubble, European Southern Observatory, Eyepiece, F-number, Faulkes Telescope North, First light, France, Galileo, Galileo Galilei, Gran Telescopio Canarias, Greek, HALCA, Hale telescope, Hans Lippershey, History of telescopes, Hooker Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Jacob Metius, Japanese, Johannes Kepler, Keck telescopes, Leonard Digges, Lick Observatory, List of largest optical reflecting telescopes, List of largest optical refracting telescopes, List of telescope types, Liverpool Telescope, Maksutov telescope, Microscope, Mount Wilson Observatory, Multiple Mirror Telescope, Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer, Newtonian telescope, Nice refractor, Optical telescope, Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, Palomar Mountain, Persians, Petzval, Philipp Ludwig von Seidel, Pyrex, Radio telescope, Radio telescopes, Rayleigh criterion, Reflector telescope, Refracting telescope, Robotic telescope, Saint-Gobain, South, Southern African Large Telescope, Spherical aberration, Timeline of telescopes, observatories, and observing technology, Very Large Telescope, Very Long Baseline Interferometry, Vikings, Visby lenses, Wisconsin, X-ray, Yerkes Telescope, Zacharias Jansen, aberrations, active optics, adaptive optics, angular size, antennas, aperture synthesis, astronomical, astronomical seeing, astronomy, atmosphere, azimuth, binoculars, borosilicate, brightness, camera lenses, charge-coupled device, degrees, detector, diameter, diffraction, diffraction limit, electromagnetic radiation, eye, focus, focuses, galaxies, gamma-ray, heavy metals, interferometer, lenses, meridian, meters, mirrors, monoculars, optical, optical interferometers, optical interferometry, optical telescopes, optics, panoramic photo, parabola, photographic plate, polarization, radio, redshift, reflecting, reflective, refracting, refractive, robotic telescopes, sidérostat, speckle imaging, spectrograph, spectrum, spotting scopes, spyglasses, telescope mount, terrestrial, theodolites, tool, transits, ultraviolet, wavelength

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Telescope mountings", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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