World's largest sun telescope.pdf

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extracted text: WORLD'S LARGEST SUN TELESCOPE Construction work is now under way on a new astronomical observatory which, when com pleted early in 1963, will house the largest solar telescope in the world. The observatory is on a mountain in Arizona, a state in the southwestern part of the United States. It will be known as the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The telescope will be housed in a ten-story high tower near a sheer mountain cliff. Its top most part will be a two-ton flat mirror, 80 inches (203 centimeters) in diameter, known as a he liostat. Moving automatically, the heliostat will fol low the sun as it travels across the sky. The sun light that strikes it will be reflected to a 60-inch (152-centimeter) parabolic mirror located 480 feet (144 meters) away, at the bottom of a shaft drill ed into the mountain. From this mirror, the sun light again will be reflected to a 48-inch (122centimeter) mirror. This mirror, in turn, will re flect the sunlight to an underground observing room. There a 34-inch (86-centimeter) image of the sun, several times larger and more brilliantly il luminated than images obtained with any other existing telescope, will' appear on a sheet of white-painted metal mounted on a table top. Scientists will be able to study the image through dark glasses, and will be able to photograph it, and direct its light to spectroscopes. ♦ ♦ ♦ that the cold war is not go-, ing to be won by anybody, that it is much too danger ous to go on fighting it at all and that the only sane object for human beings in the twentieth century is to cooperate in building up an international order under which Cuba can choose Com munism or Hungary democ racy, or India some system of her own, without upsetting the balance of power and endangering the lives of eve ryone else in the world.” October 1961 45
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