Hale Telescope

Hale Telescope

Alternative names	palomar
Named after	George Ellery Hale
Part of	Palomar Observatory
Location(s)	Palomar Mountain, California, US
Coordinates	33°21′23″N 116°51′54″W / 33.35628°N 116.86489°W / 33.35628; -116.86489
Altitude	1,713 m (5,620 ft)
First light	January 26, 1949, 10:06 pm PST
Discovered	Caliban, Sycorax, Jupiter LI, Alcor B
Telescope style	optical telescope reflecting telescope
Diameter	200 in (5.1 m)
Collecting area	31,000 sq in (20 m2)
Focal length	16.76 m (55 ft 0 in)
Mounting	equatorial mount
Website	www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/about/telescopes/hale.html
Location of Hale Telescope
Related media on Commons
[edit on Wikidata]

The Hale Telescope is a 200-inch (5.1 m), f/3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, US, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928, he orchestrated the planning, design, and construction of the observatory, but with the project ending up taking 20 years he did not live to see its commissioning. The Hale was groundbreaking for its time, with double the diameter of the second-largest telescope, and pioneered many new technologies in telescope mount design and in the design and fabrication of its large aluminum coated "honeycomb" low thermal expansion Pyrex mirror.^[1] It was completed in 1949 and is still in active use.

The Hale Telescope represented the technological limit in building large optical telescopes for over 30 years. It was the largest telescope in the world from its construction in 1949 until the Soviet BTA-6 was built in 1976, and the second largest until the construction of the Keck Observatory Keck 1 in Hawaii in 1993.