What kinds of powerful telescopes did NASA have access to in the 1960's?
January 8, 2016 9:21 AM   Subscribe

I'm curious as to what kind of powerful equipment NASA either had (or had access to) during the 1960's, which was considered among the best in the world for scanning the skies? And where were they located?

For a story. Looking for a telescope (or the like) that would have been considered very impressive or unusual at the time. Has to have been on US soil, and something NASA would have had access to during the space race.

It doesn't have to be a standard telescope or radio telescope -- could be something else, as long as its purpose is peering upwards in some astronomical capacity. Thanks!
posted by egeanin to Science & Nature (11 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
does it really have to be nasa? arecibo is "american" (but not nasa, afaik) and very impressive.

oh, edit: way down near the bottom of the article it does mention some funding from nasa. i am sure they could have got access.
posted by andrewcooke at 9:24 AM on January 8, 2016


Best answer: NASA doesn't own much in the way of ground based visual astronomy telescopes, though it does fund work. The deep space network is a set of NASA funded radio telescopes for communicating with probes that started in the sixties to support lunar missions. The 200 inch hale scope at mt polomar was by far the most powerful visual scope, and though initial funding came from the rockefellers, there was probably some nasa funding going there by the 60s.
posted by rockindata at 9:35 AM on January 8, 2016


My local observatory inherited a 60's vintage computer controlled 24 inch Newtonian reflecting telescope. The story that one of the local astronomy club members told me is that the telescope was originally used to track missiles during the cold-war, and thus had to move very quickly and smoothly. The thing does move quite fast, which seems somewhat unusual for telescopes. Perhaps you should look into what telescopes were owned by the Airforce during that time frame.
posted by cosmicbandito at 9:42 AM on January 8, 2016


The National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Green Bank telescope in West Virginia was in operation in the 60s. It doesn't seem implausible that NASA would have had access if they needed it. Not sure how useful it would have been for scanning the skies in the sense you mean.

The NRAO does operate other telescopes and arrays, although I know that at least the Very Large Array in New Mexico (of Contact, 2010, and Terminator sequel fame) wasn't built until the 70s.
posted by col_pogo at 10:15 AM on January 8, 2016


Best answer: The Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory was the biggest optical telescope in the world at the time (it's contributing very significantly to science even today). While it wasn't officially at NASA project, there were/are lots and lots of connections between CalTech and the federal government such that NASA would have no problems getting access to the Hale Telescope if it needed it (probably via JPL).
posted by Betelgeuse at 10:24 AM on January 8, 2016


Best answer: The Hale Telescope has the nickname "Big Eye." It's the biggest of several telescopes at the Palomar Observatory. In the 1950s, the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt telescope there performed the first comprehensive telescope sky survey, POSS.

In the 1960s, the Hale was naturally pre-digital, so it was directly exposing glass photographic plates coated with a Kodak emulsion that was "hypersensitized" to some particular wavelengths-- it's typical to view the same star (etc.) through different color filters because the relative brightness can how far along in its lifespan it is. In college I had access to a copy of the POSS plates, in which in my case was 2-3 closet-like file cabinets with hanging file folders containing glassine sheets to be viewed on a light table (you know those lightboxes that doctors use for looking at X-rays? Like that, but it's a large table). The plates were negative; the stars and galaxies were black specks on an otherwise transparent sheet.

First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe by Richard Preston was a good read about Big Eye and other projects going on at Palomar. If you're old enough, you likely remember Preston's famously huge book, "The Hot Zone." This 1987 book features Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker, the astronomer couple who, with David Levy in 1993, discovered the comet that became known as Shoemaker-Levy 9, which collided with Jupiter in 1994 leaving spectacular planet-Earth-sized bruises in its atmosphere.

nota bene
: There's also a Hale Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, also in Pasadena. It's a 60" telescope, but should not be confused with Big Eye.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:09 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is it a hard constraint that the telescope be ground-based for your story? I'm guessing yes, since you specify US soil, but it's possible you meant a telescope or other instrument under NASA control.
posted by Rob Rockets at 11:41 AM on January 8, 2016


The Holmdel Horn Antenna.

Originally designed to bounces signals off planets, it was the instrument that first measured the residual background radiation of the big bang, leading to Nobel Prizes.
posted by SemiSalt at 11:47 AM on January 8, 2016


> The Holmdel Horn Antenna.

As seen in this Drunk History recreation. For "sound" read radio waves. Other than that, and some inebriated exuberance, the details are pretty much the same as I learned about it in college, right down to the pigeon poop.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:59 AM on January 8, 2016


Response by poster: Telescope does not have to be ground-based -- but the character needs to be able to have access to it within the US.

Re: Hale telescope -- that could work -- and I've actually been there to visit!
Thanks!
posted by egeanin at 7:21 PM on January 8, 2016


The Minitrack Network
posted by Rash at 9:26 PM on January 8, 2016


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