Herschell's Telescope works on Scaffolding Castors!
Did anyone watch the amazing Stargazing live on televsion earlier this month? The one thing, amoungst many, that really caught my eye was the reconstruction of the Herschell twenty foot telescope on scaffolding castors at Derby University.
Did anyone watch the amazing Stargazing live on televsion earlier this month? The one thing, amoungst many, that really caught my eye was the reconstruction of the Herschell twenty foot telescope on scaffolding castors at Derby University. This reconstruction used Herschells own groundbraking original designs from 1785, took months in the planning and was completed live on our screens.
Sir Frederick William Herschel lived from 1738 to 1822 and was considered by many as one of the great astronomers, as he discovered Uranus and its moons and was revered because of his knowledge and his advances in the designs of modern reflecting telescopes. It is his telescope that caught the interest of the producers of Stargazing live, who together with Derby University, BBC Learning, and the Open University, collaborated to build a working model on castors, that would become a permanent fixture on campus.
Originally constructed as a forty foot telescope, sited at the Observatory House in Slough Berkshire, in its day it was the largest telescope in the world, and held that title for over 50 years. The original tube construction was iron and mounted on a wooden framework, manoeuvrable on casters and wheels. Mirrors weighing half a ton took over year to grind and polish. These reflecting mirrors remained the largest in the world until 1845, and again represented Herschel’s forward thinking in design and construction. A Remnant of this original telescope remains as a ten foot piece at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and the original mirror resides in the Science and Industry Museum in London.
As well as building his telescope on castors, Herschel discovered and catalogued over two thousand five hundred nebulae, discovered Uranus and its moons, and an additional two moons around Saturn. However recreating his telescope exactly may have proved a step to far for the Stargazing BBC team. The producers of the programme know that an exact replica would take over a year to construct, and the mirror itself would need to be polished for up to sixteen hours a day! A more practical idea was a scaled down version, using modern optics, metal scaffolding and scaffolding castors. It may not be an exact replica, but it is a modern close approximation! The scaffolding framework runs on heavy duty rubber wheels. The concrete base for the telescope has had a mural painted on it by local school children as the BBC Team wanted the telescope to be a permanent fixture, and have a lasting legacy as an astronomical project. Perhaps it caught my eye, as you may be aware, for the scaffolding castors. These are a popular range of castors with rubber wheels, that can either fit into scaffolding pipe or encase the pipe as a socket castor. Scaffolding castors are traditionally used on building sites, so this new way to use scaffolding castors fits neatly in line with Herschel’s philosophy of modern invention!
Herschel’s replica Telescope is still available to see on campus at Derby University, and if you are really lucky on a clear night you may see more than you bargained for.
