Shooting a Telescope Mirror
Photo Credit: Bill Keel
Well I’ll be dipped in mercury, it WAS true.
AstroGeek posted a comment on my last post with this link from Bill Keel showing the bullet holes in the primary of the 107-inch Harlan J. Smith telescope. It wasn’t an astronomer that did it though, it was a new employee who had a breakdown (MacDonald Observatory must’ve been a stressful place to work back then).
Apparently, it was important to distinguish that he was from Ohio:
Firearms are very common in Texas. Astronomer Brian Warner had his tongue only slightly in cheek when he remarked that “Jeff Davis County is about the size of Israel - and slightly better armed.” The prophecy inherent in the aphorism came to pass. The full precipitating causes may never be known, but one February night in 1970 a McDonald Observatory employee (not a Texan, but an Ohioan newly hired from another observatory!) suffered a breakdown and carried a pistol to the observing floor of the 107-inch telescope. He fired a shot at his supervisor, and then unloaded the rest of the clip into the primary mirror. Happily, fused silica is more resilent than ordinary glass, and the big mirror did not break. The craters have been bored out and painted black to reduce any light-scattering effect, and the end result is simply a slight reduction in the efficiency of the telescope. It is now the equivalent of a 106-inch telescope. The incident made the national television news, with Walter Cronkite describing it before a projection showing the wrong telescope upside down.
I like the part about ‘not a Texan’. Oh no, Texans don’t do that, please don’t blame this on Texas. Ohioans, THEY’RE the problem, don’t let Ohioans have handguns, they’ll shoot anything in sight.
Anyway, the picture above is really cool. I’ve circled the bullet holes in the lower right of the picture.
[I hope you appreciated the fact that I stayed away from all ‘going postal’ references. I really, really wanted to go there, but I refrained.]
Thanks AstroGeek!
Technorati Tags: macdonald observatory, shooting telescopes, telescopes
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POSTED IN: news from readers, skewed perspective, telescopes
1 opinion for Shooting a Telescope Mirror
Alan Bajandas
Jun 26, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Hey There Mr. Darnell,
My name is Alan Bajandas, a freelancer with Scientific American Magazine. I was reading this entry–Scientific American also covered the liquid-lens telescope–and thought that the following article might also be of interest. It was published today online and covers a recent study correlating the long-disparaged reports of ‘lunar transients’ to locations pinpointed to emit radioactive radon 222 gas. I thought this could make for some interesting fodder, however you happen to come down on the study.
We invite you to link to the article (see URL below), or even to reprint—whatever you might find useful.
Article Title: Lunar “UFOs” May Be Volcanic Belches
Summary: Mysterious lunar flashes match up geographically with puffs of radon gas
URL:
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=699CE1CC-E7F2-99DF-3F7ED3707CAE0277&chanID=sa003&ec=ab178_0626
If you like the article, we welcome the opportunity to develop an ongoing relationship with your blog. If ever you’d like to make sure not to receive further messages from me, just reply to this message. To contact Scientific American directly with any question at all, send email to comments@sciam.com with the subject “outreach feedback,” and we’ll get back to you shortly.
All The Best,
Alan Bajandas
Scientific American, Web Outreach
alanbajandas@yahoo.com
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