Ирландиядағы тарихи алып телескоп

Historic Irish reflecting telescope

Leviathan of Parsonstown, or Rosse six foot telescope, is a historic reflecting telescope of aperture, which was the largest telescope in the world from 1845 until the construction of the Hooker Telescope in California in 1917. The Rosse six foot telescope was built by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse on his estate, Birr Castle, at Parsonstown (now Birr) in Ireland.

Parsons improved the techniques of casting, grinding and polishing large telescope mirrors from speculum metal, and constructed steam powered grinding machines for parabolic mirrors. His mirror of 1839 was cast in smaller pieces and then fitted together before grinding and polishing; its 1840 successor was cast in a single piece. In 1842, Parsons cast his first mirror, but it took another five casts before he had two ground and polished mirrors. Speculum mirrors tarnished rapidly; with two mirrors, one could be used in the telescope while the other was being re polished. The telescope tube and supporting structure were completed in 1845. The mirror was 5 inches (13 cm) thick and weighed almost 3 tons. This required a mirror cell to support and to prevent the mirror deforming under its own weight. The length of the tube and mirror box is about 54 feet (16 m); including the mirror it weighed about 12 tons. The tube is supported at the mirror end by a "universal joint", a hinge with two axes, which allows the tube to be inclined through a large range of altitude and also to be turned through a limited range of azimuth. The azimuth range is limited to about one hour by the supporting walls that flank the tube on its eastern and western sides. The walls are 23 feet (7 m) apart, 40 feet (12 m) high, and 71 feet (22 m) long. A chain and counterweight keeps the telescope in balance, another chain with a winch controls the altitude. A rack and pinion beam underneath the tube controls the azimuth. This beam is connected to the eastern supporting wall, where it can move on a circular iron arc to allow the telescope to change altitude. The tube is of the Newtonian design with the eyepiece on its western side. At low altitude, the observer accesses the eyepiece from a wooden gallery that spans the distance between the walls and can slide up and down guides to follow the telescope in altitude. A cage on the gallery moves sideways to reach the eyepiece at different azimuth. At high elevation, curved galleries on top of the western wall are used, which can be moved across the wall to follow the telescope in azimuth. After William Parsons (the 3rd Earl of Rosse) died in 1867, the 4th Earl (Laurence Parsons) continued to operate the six foot telescope. From 1874 to 1878, J. L. E. Dreyer worked with the telescope and began the compilation of his New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars.

In 2017, LOFAR radio telescope station IE613, one of some 50 similar stations in Europe, was constructed in the grounds of the castle. This is the westernmost station in the LOFAR network. LOFAR makes observations in the 10 MHz to 240 MHz frequency range with two types of antennas: Low Band Antenna (LBA) and High Band Antenna (HBA), optimized for 10 80 MHz and 120 240 MHz respectively. The Birr Castle station consists of 96 LBA's and 96 HBA's and a total of 96 digital Receiver Units (RCU's). The Birr Castle station on its own is the Irish Low Frequency Array (I LOFAR) I Lofar telescope. In 2018, I LOFAR observed for the first time a billion year old red dwarf, flare star, namely CN Leo (Wolf 359), 7.9 light years away.