New Telescope

OBSERVATORY ADDS 8-INCH REFLECTOR MADE BY JOHN W. LOVELY '37

THE Shattuck Observatory has a new eight-inch reflecting telescope. It came about as a result of the hobby of John W. Lovely '§7. While he was taking Astronomy 2 in his junior year he completed a sixinch reflector which he brought to class and used for the remainder of the course. He then offered to make an eight-inch reflector for the Observatory. It should be noted in passing that the nation-wide hobby of telescope making had its origin in Springfield, Vermont, and that John Lovely hails from there.

By the end of the summer he had finished the grinding and polishing of the parabolic mirror for the telescope and went on to build a skillfully designed equatorial mounting. During his senior year he devoted his vacation time to work on the telescope bringing it to completion at the time of his graduation from College.

Equatorial telescopes are usually equipped with a driving mechanism which makes them follow the celestial object under observation in its diurnal motion across the sky. John considered the use of a synchronous motor for the drive of this telescope, but found that graduate work at M.I.T. kept him so completely occupied that he had no opportunity to work out the details of the scheme. At this point John's father, Mr. John E. Lovely, vice president and chief engineer of the Jones and Lamson Machine Company, decided that the motor drive problem appealed to him as a winter's hobby for himself. Accordingly the eight-inch reflector continued its growth in the expert hands of Mr. Lovely. By early spring of 1938 the telescope was finished and ready for use.

PROPER HOUSING DESIGNED

So delicate a mechanism required a suitable housing to give commensurable utilization. After discussion of the projected uses of the new instrument, Mr. Lovely accepted the responsibility of designing the proper building for it. Before late Autumn a third white brick unit had appeared on Observatory Hill. As the pictures show, its roof may be rolled away toward the east to uncover the eight-inch reflector and its twelve foot square observing platform. The telescope is mounted on a concrete pier which is set on bed rock. The telescope is a Newtonian type of five-foot focal length with the eyepiece carried on a rotating sleeve at the upper end of the tube. The height of the observing platform is such that the observer can easily reach the eyepiece without the use of a ladder, regardless of his size or of the position of the heavenly body under observation. The effect of this arrangement is to greatly increase the time actually spent in observing during a class period. Moreover, since the rolling roof exposes the entire sky to view the student may see at a glance the whole region toward which the telescope is directed, a condition not possible in the usual dome with its small shutter opening. In practice it has been found that while a student awaits his turn to use the telescope he increases his fa- miliarity with the visible constellations, quite as a matter of course, since the whole sky is exposed to him.

This instrument is a particularly desirable addition to the equipment of the Observatory because it furnishes an excellent example of a type of telescope which has become increasingly important in recent years at the major research observatories. Stimulating newspaper and magazine articles on the famous 100-inch Mt. Wilson reflector and the 200-inch for Mt. Palomar, now under construction, have greatly increased general interest in reflecting telescopes. Undergraduates are quite properly interested in seeing and using a reflector along with the older standby, the refracting telescope. As a result of this gift by the Lovely family and the provision of an adequate housing by the Trustees of the College, it is no longer necessary at the Shattuck Observatory to resort to a blackboard diagram to explain the essential features of the world's largest telescopes. Designed particularly for instructional use, the instrument adds significantly to the Observatory's complement of teaching apparatus.

LATEST ACQUISITION OF DARTMOUTH'S SHATTUCK OBSERVATORY The two photographs at the left show the new building housing the 8-inch reflector telescope made and presented by John W. Lovely'37, the lower picture showing the roof rolled back to expose the sky. At the right, Prof. Richard H. Goddard '2O, director of the Ob-servatory, looks through the new telescope, for which Mr. John E. Lovely, Springfield, Ft., engineer, made rotating machinery and de-signed the housing shown at the left.