Samuel Oschin telescope in the context of "Palomar Observatory"

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⭐ Core Definition: Samuel Oschin telescope

The Samuel Oschin telescope (/ˈɔːʃɪn/), also called the Oschin Schmidt, is a 48-inch-aperture (1.22 m) Schmidt camera at the Palomar Observatory in northern San Diego County, California, United States. It consists of a 49.75-inch (1.264 m) Schmidt corrector plate and a 72-inch (1.8 m) (f/2.5) mirror. The instrument is strictly a camera; there is no provision for an eyepiece to look through it. It originally used 10-inch (25 cm) and 14-inch (36 cm) glass photographic plates. Since the focal plane is curved, these plates had to be preformed in a special jig before being loaded into the camera.

Construction on the Schmidt telescope began in 1939 and it was completed in 1948. It was named the Samuel Oschin telescope in 1986. Before that it was just called the 48-inch (1.2 m) Schmidt.

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👉 Samuel Oschin telescope in the context of Palomar Observatory

The Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in the Palomar Mountains of San Diego County, California, United States. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observatory is granted to Caltech and its research partners, which include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Yale University, and the National Astronomical Observatories of China.

The observatory operates several telescopes, including the 200-inch (5.1 m) Hale Telescope, the 48-inch (1.2 m) Samuel Oschin telescope (dedicated to the Zwicky Transient Facility, ZTF), the Palomar 60-inch (1.5 m) Telescope, and the 30-centimetre (12-inch) Gattini-IR telescope. Decommissioned instruments include the Palomar Testbed Interferometer and the first telescopes at the observatory, an 18-inch (46 cm) Schmidt camera from 1936.

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Samuel Oschin telescope in the context of Schmidt camera

A Schmidt camera, also referred to as the Schmidt telescope, is a catadioptric astrophotographic telescope designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. The design was invented by Bernhard Schmidt in 1930.

Some notable examples are the Samuel Oschin telescope (formerly Palomar Schmidt), the UK Schmidt Telescope and the ESO Schmidt; these provided the major source of all-sky photographic imaging from 1950 until 2000, when electronic detectors took over. A recent example is the Kepler space telescope exoplanet finder.

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