Abstract
SIR HAROLD SPENGER JONES, Astronomer Royal, has recently spent three months in the United States, at theinvitation ofmany American astronomers, in course whichhe visited most of the astronomical abservatories, studying programmes of work and, in particular, the design and performance of large telescopes in connexion with the design, now under consideration, of the Isaac Newton reflector. During his visit he received the gift of a 98-in. 'Pyrex' glass disk for use in this telescope. The disk, which was cast before the War by the Corning Glass Co., was originally intended for use in a large reflector for the Michigan Observatory, a project which for various reasons was later abandoned. Its cost had been defrayed from the McGregor Fund. Judge Henry Hulbert, president of the Trustees of the McGregor Fund, informed the Astronomer Royal that the Trustees had unanimously resolved to make an outright gift of the disk, together with a 26½ -in. disk for a secondary mirror and the central plug from the large disk, to the Royal Greenwich Observatory, for use in the Isaac Newton telescope. This generous gift, which has been gratefully accepted, should enable the telescope to be completed and brought into use some two or three years before it would otherwise have been possible. It is a symbol of the good-will on the part of the United States towards Great Britain, which the Astronomer Royal found everywhere in the course of his visit, and of the desire for close co-operation between the astronomers of the two countries.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Disk for the Isaac Newton Telescope. Nature 163, 867 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163867c0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163867c0