Founded and funded in 1789 by Archbishop Richard Robinson, the Observatory at Armagh, N.Ireland, represents an interesting mixture of historic and current astronomical research.
Armagh was the second observatory to be built in Ireland - the first being Dunsink near Dublin, which was completed a few years earlier. As with other observatories of the period, the main work was determining accurate positions of the stars and planets which was done through the use of transit instruments, meridian circles and accurate clocks.
The various observatory domes house a bevy of interesting historical and modern telescopes including the Troughton Equatorial Telescope which could perform the functions of a transit instrument, a quadrant and an equatorial all rolled into one, a 10" refractor and a 15" reflector both made by Thomas Grubb of Dublin and a 18" Calver telescope. These last three have been beautifully restored in recent years.
The latest addition, installed in October 2010 and officially opened in a ceremony on March 4, 2011, is a brand new PlaneWave robotic telescope. Operated under the direction of staff astronomer Simon Jeffery, it will begin making observations of variable stars, solar system objects and other targets very soon. With its 43cm primary mirror and sensitive CCD camera it will make a great addition to the research goals of the Observatory.
Today, around 25 astronomers are actively studying Stellar Astrophysics, Solar Physics, Solar System astronomy - particularly asteroids, comets, and meteor streams, and the Earth's climate from Armagh Observatory.
Text and Photo (2011) by S.Beck.
The Jansky Very Large Array is an array of twenty seven 25 metre dishes (arranged in the shape of a 'Y') used in Radio Astronomy.
It was inaugurated in 1980. In 2012 it was named in honour of the pioneer radio astronomer Karl Jansky.
The array is situated on the high plains west of Soccoro, New Mexico, USA. Photo taken in 2005.
The Australia Telescope Compact Array is an array of six 22 metre dishes used in Radio Astronomy.
It was opened in 1988, the year of the Austrlian Bicentenary. It can achieve a 5" resolution at a wavelength of 21cm, the famous Hydrogen Line used to map spiral arms in galaxies. When linked up with other telescopes on the continent, resolution in the milli-arcsec range can be acheived.
Among the objects studied were SN 1987A in the LMC, the centre of the Galaxy, Active Galaxies, Jets in Galaxies and Pulsars.
The array lies west of Narrabi, New South Wales, Australia. Photo taken in 2002.
The 64 metre at Parkes is a completely steerable alt-azimuth dish. It is the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. It was inaugurated in October 1961.
This dish completed two surveys: at 408MHz during the mid 1960s and at 2.7GHz during the early 1970s. A whole range of radio objects from Quasars to Pulsars have been observed over the years. The famous dish has also been involved in space communications, most notably for NASA during the first manned moon landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969. In 2005 it relayed images and data from the Huygens probe during its landing on Titan during the Cassini Huygens Mission (NASA-ESA).
The observatory is situated north of the town of Parkes, which is in the outback of New South Wales, Australia. Photo taken in 2002.
The 5 metre (or 200 inch) reflector at Palomar for many years epitomised the largest telescope in the world. First light occured in 1948.
It is situated in the mountains of southern California, north-east of San Diego. Photo taken in 2006.
There is also the famous 1.2m Oschin Schmidt telescope.
Opened in 1888, Lick Observatory has some famous telescopes: 36 inch Lick Refractor; 36 inch Crossley Reflector and the Shane 3m Reflector.
It is situated on Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California. Photo taken in 2004.