Early Reflectors

Well into the 18th century, astronomers mainly used long

refracting telescopes, designed around a meticulously shaped glass lens.
However, other telescope designs offered a way to avoid some of the defects
that could not be avoided in refractor lenses. In 1668, Isaac Newton devised a
reflecting telescope. Instead of a lens, it used a single curved main mirror,
together with a smaller flat mirror. In the next century, huge instruments
descended from Newton's design turned out to be especially useful for
studying very faint objects, such as the dim patches of light known as
nebulae. The studies that the new and bigger tools made possible led to
(click to enlarge) fundamental changes in our understanding of the universe.
Newton’s
telescope design ...I contrived heretofore
a Perspective by Reflexions...

Scholars knew that you could get magnification using a variety of

combinations of lenses and mirrors. A number of scientists speculated on
telescopes that used mirrors, fueled by an increasingly refined theoretical
study of optics. One landmark was the Dioptrique of Ren� Descartes,
appended to his Discourse on Method of 1637. Here Descartes addressed the
problem of spherical aberration — a slight blurring of any image that was
created by a lens or mirror curved like a segment of a sphere.

A Scottish mathematician,
James Gregory, proposed a new design
for a reflecting telescope in his 1663
book Optica Promota. Gregory's
theoretical design featured a primary
mirror with a parabolic curvature. It
would reflect light to an elliptical
secondary mirror, which reflected it
back down through a hole in the
primary to the astronomer's eye. The
Gregorian design, along with the
superficially similar Cassegrain design
(named after an obscure 18th century
Frenchman), would eventually become
the predominant design for reflecting
telescopes. But at the time these
designs were proposed, opticians could
not polish mirrors in curves that were
not spherical. Some London opticians Portrait of James Gregory
tried to produce reflecting telescopes,
but failed.
 The most significant development came when Isaac Newton, after his
groundbreaking research in light and optics, concluded that refracting
telescopes would always be defective. For any lens would, like a prism,
disperse the colors of light, in direct proportion to the refraction. The result
was chromatic aberration—the image of a white star would always show a
smear of colors. So Newton turned his attention to the design of a practical
telescope which would use a mirror to collect starlight.

Seeing therefore the Improvement of Telescopes of given

length by Refractions is desperate, I contrived heretofore a
Perspective by Reflexions, using instead of an Object-glass a
concave metal.
—Newton, Opticks, 1704

Newton presented his design to

England's Royal Society in January 1672, where
it aroused great interest. He had succeeded in
making a mirror with a spherical curvature,
slightly less than 1� inches in diameter. The
mirror was made of a copper-tin alloy, to which
Newton had added a bit of arsenic to make it
easier to polish. It had a magnification of about
40. Above this primary mirror Newton placed a
small flat secondary mirror at a 45-degree
Newton's 1672
angle, to reflect the light into an eyepiece
paper to the
mounted in the side of the telescope tube.
Royal Society
(1 MB PDF)
Although Newton's telescope stirred interest it
Newton's reflecting
remained largely a curiosity. Others tried but
telescope failed to grind mirrors of regular curvature.
Adding to the problem, the metal mirror
tarnished and had to be repolished every few months, which could affect the
curvature. And although Newton was convinced his design was superior to a
refractor, the small size of his instrument concealed the defects caused by its
spherical curvature. Some further experimentation was done with reflecting
telescopes, but little progress was made until the 18th century.

Refinement of the
Early Reflecting Telescope

John Hadley was born near London. He showed a talent for

inventiveness from an early age, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society at
the age of 35, in 1717. Around this time, with help from his two brothers, he
began to experiment with the grinding and polishing of metal. He used
speculum, a combination of bronze and silver used for mirrors since ancient
times. By 1721, he had succeeded in making a 6-inch-diameter Newtonian
telescope with a focal length of 62 inches.
Portrait of Hadley Hadley managed to polish his metal mirror so
that it had an approximately parabolic shape,
avoiding the distortion in previous telescopes
with spherical curves. Like Newton, Hadley
first showed off his telescope at a meeting of
the Royal Society. Records from the meeting
say that it was powerful enough to "enlarge an
object near two hundred times."

Just as important as the telescope's

mirror was its mounting. Telescopes have to
track objects across the sky as the Earth turns.
To achieve this, Hadley developed what is now
called an altitude-azimuth mount. The Hadley's reflector,
altitude axis lay parallel to the horizon, and c. 1721
the azimuth axis pointed perpendicularly.
With an alt-az mount, an astronomer had to
move the telescope along two axes simultaneously to keep an object in view,
but this was compensated by its relatively compact size.

Hadley's telescope was tested by two English astronomers in 1722 by

observing Saturn. They saw four of the planet's satellites (the largest in
transit across the face of the planet), and the divisions in Saturn's rings.
Although they judged its images not as bright as those in Huygen's 123-foot
aerial telescope, Hadley's design was far easier to use.

Before he died in 1744, Hadley continued to experiment with different ways

of polishing mirrors for telescopes. No less important, he worked on ways to
test the results, for you cannot polish a curve better than you can measure it.

The Herschels' Giant Reflectors

It was a mighty bewilderment of slanted masts, spars and

ladders and ropes, from the midst of which a vast
tube�lifted its mighty muzzle defiantly to the sky.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

LISTEN to William Herschel, a musician who moved from Hanover to England and
turned to astronomy, directed his first efforts toward building refracting
sample of Sir
telescopes. But the lengthy tubes annoyed him (he made one as long as 30
William Herschel's
feet), and he turned his attention to mirrors. By the late 1770s, Herschel had
Oboe Concerto in
built several reflectors. His most successful one had a 6�-inch mirror and
C Major (from third was 7 feet long. He used this telescope to compile the first substantial
movement, Allegretto) on
the CD Sir William catalog of double stars and, in 1781, to discover the planet Uranus. This
Herschel, Music by the discovery brought Herschel royal recognition — and an annual salary of
Father of Modern �200, which allowed him to practice astronomy full-time.
Astronomy
From Newport Classic.
[380K MP3]
 picture of William and Caroline Herschel

Encouraged by his success,

Herschel spent the next several years
perfecting an even bigger telescope. It
featured a mirror nearly 19 inches in diameter,
encased in a tube 20 feet long on an alt-az
mount. Like other early telescope mirrors, it
was made of metal (mostly copper and tin)
and tarnished quickly, so it had to be
repolished often. The base of the telescope
could be opened and the mirror easily
removed. Another mirror was always on hand
Herschel's to use while the first was being polished.
20-foot telescope
William Herschel did his observations with
the assistance of his sister Caroline. The
telescope's eyepiece was mounted at the top of the tube, so Herschel
observed from a platform that could be raised or lowered as needed.
Who Were the Caroline sat inside the house nearby at a window. When William signalled Looking d
Herschels? by pulling a string, she would open the window and record her brother's Herschel's 2
observations as he called them down to her. Observing was arduous. tube witho
Herschel went out whenever possible, even in bitter cold. One night, while eyepeice
using an earlier telescope, his ink froze in its bottle and his best mirror
"crack'd into two pieces." Observing from the high perch was also
hazardous. Caroline recorded that she and her brother were involved in a
"pretty long list of accidents� which were proving nearly fatal to my
brother as well as myself."

About Herschel In 1783, using the 20-foot reflector, Herschel began to search the night skies
& Nebulae for the dim patches of light in the skies called nebulae. By 1784, he reported MORE
that his telescope could resolve individual stars in nebulae previously Herschel
identified by the French astronomer Charles Messier and that he had also foot tele
found hundreds of new nebulae.
from
Smithso
 [Herschel] has discovered fifteen hundred universes! How
many more he may find who can conjecture?
—English novelist Fanny Burney, 1786

Herschel's 20-foot telescope was the best of

his instruments. In 1785, he began to design
one twice as large, which could collect four
times as much light. He began using this
40-foot telescope in the fall of 1789, and
quickly found two more satellites of Saturn
(Mimas and Enceladus). However, the long
telescope tube tended to bend, while the
frequent need to re-polish the main mirror
limited its usefulness. Herschel used this
cumbersome giant only occasionally,
preferring the more manageable 20-foot Herschel's
instrument. As he noted, "to look through 40-foot telescope
one larger than required is loss of time,
which in a fine night, an astronomer has not to spare."

Herschel made his last observation with the 40-foot telescope

in 1815. His journal notes: "Saturn was very bright and considerably well-
defined� the mirror is extremely tarnished." Such tarnishing was one of
several severe limitations for large reflectors, and over the next several
decades their popularity declined. Advances in optical design and
glassmaking were revitalizing the refracting telescope as a tool for research.

Back: Next:
The First Golden Era
Telescpoes of Refractors

See also: (IDEAS) The Mechanical Universe

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