The largest telescopes in the world. What can you see through a telescope? Meter telescope

BTA, or the large azimuth telescope, is the same telescope with a 6-meter 40-ton mirror, which for a long time was the largest in the world. He began his work in 1975, and thanks to him many discoveries were made. However, any mirror of any telescope needs updating over time, it happened here too.

When the telescope was just being built, there was no technology in the world for creating a single-piece mirror of such a large size. Therefore, it did not work out the first time. The first piece cracked when it cooled down. The second attempt was unsuccessful - there were too many large defects on the surface of the mirror. However, this mirror was nevertheless installed and served until 1978. And only on the third attempt the mirror turned out to be of good quality, and it was installed instead of the defective one in the same 1978. However, over time, it required resurfacing and the application of a new reflective coating - its reflectivity decreased to 70%.

The work was carried out at the Lytkarino optical glass plant, and took 10 years. It took about a year to remove the 8mm top layer from the 6m mirror alone. Note that the accuracy of the surface of the main mirror of the telescope is fractions of a micrometer, and this work is very delicate, especially for such a huge surface.

All work on the preparation of the mirror was completed only on November 3, 2017. Then the problem arose of transporting it to the telescope. The dimensions of the container were 6.5 meters, and it took several months to coordinate the route (bureaucracy in action). The mass of the tractor and the mirror totaled 93 tons, but within 8 days the mirror was delivered to the observatory.

The mirror will now be stored in an airtight container until May, after which it will be installed on the telescope. During this time, the staff will prepare the telescope itself, especially since the mass of the updated mirror is now less thanks to the cameras cut into it.

However, even after the installation of the main mirror, observations of celestial objects will not begin. The mirror does not have a reflective layer, it is just transparent for now. All work on aluminizing the surface will be carried out after the mirror is installed in the telescope. This will both simplify the process and allow you to get the surface best quality... If you apply a reflective layer immediately, then during transportation and installation of the mirror, it could get a lot of scratches and other damage.

And yet - the new mirror is not at all the one that has served faithfully for so many years. This is a remanufactured first blank. And the one that is in the telescope now will be removed and placed in a container. Re-polishing and aluminizing it is too expensive a process for which the observatory simply does not have the money.

On Tuesday, we began testing a new instrument on our Zeiss-1000 telescope. The second largest optical telescope of our observatory (in common parlance - "meter") is much less known than the 6-meter BTA and is lost against the background of its tower. But despite its relatively modest diameter, it is a rather demanded instrument, actively used by both our astronomers and external applicants. Much time is devoted to monitoring - tracking changes in the brightness and spectrum of variable objects: active galactic nuclei, sources of gamma-ray bursts, binary systems with white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes, and other flaring objects. More recently, extrasolar planetary transits have been added to the list.
In ancient times, when we had not yet observed remotely, coming in the morning in the morning to the room on the BTA tower, sometimes took the traditional "tired shot from the BTA" - the sunrise over the neat Zeiss-1000 tower. Something like this, when the clouds lie down to the horizon and merge with the snow, if it's winter:

Before that, I had to work on the meter myself only a few times and a very long time ago, in particular, I received data on it for my first publication (photometry of a dusty galatika NGC972).

A short photo story about places where sightseers do not often visit.

A telescope in a rare configuration - the Cassegrain focus is free of equipment:

I take this opportunity to take a photo of my own reflection in the secondary mirror:

I go out to the area around the dome and take a picture of the telescope through an open visor. Pay attention to the wooden cladding of the dome. The telescope was supplied from the GDR, complete with the building:

On the other hand, there are all-sky cameras on the roof, the picture from which is broadcast to the network. Below is the valley of the Bolshoi Zelenchuk River:

To the right is the dome of our third telescope, the smallest one, Zeiss-600. The moon rises near Elbrus.

Both close-ups:

Panorama of the BTA tower complex with a megacrane, the sun is setting somewhere above

I was immediately reminded in the comments that it is imperative to write about the BTA-6. I fulfill wishes :-)

For many years, the world's largest telescope BTA (Large Azimuthal Telescope) belonged to our country, and it was designed and built entirely using domestic technologies, demonstrating the country's leadership in the field of creating optical instruments. In the early 60s, Soviet scientists received a "special task" from the government - to create a telescope larger than that of the Americans (Hale telescope - 5 m). They considered that a meter more would be enough, since the Americans generally considered it senseless to create solid mirrors more than 5 meters in size due to deformation under their own weight.

What is the history of the creation of this unique scientific object?

Now we will find out ...

By the way, the first photo is from a very, look it certainly too.

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M. V. Keldysh, L. A. Artsimovich, I. M. Kopylov and others at the BTA construction site. 1966 g.

The history of the Large Azimuth Telescope (BTA, Karachay-Cherkessia) began on March 25, 1960, when, at the suggestion of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the State Committee for Defense Technology, the USSR Council of Ministers adopted a resolution to create a complex with a reflector telescope with a main mirror 6 meters in diameter.

Its purpose is “to study the structure, physical nature and evolution of extragalactic objects, to study in detail the physical characteristics and chemical composition non-stationary and magnetic stars ”. The head contractor was the State Optical and Mechanical Plant named after V.I. OGPU (GOMZ), on the basis of which LOMO was soon formed, and the chief designer was Bagrat Konstantinovich Ioannisiani. BTA was the latest astronomical technique for its time, containing many truly revolutionary solutions. Since then, the mounting of all large telescopes in the world has been carried out according to the brilliantly proven alt-azimuth scheme, which was used by our scientists at BTA for the first time in world practice. The specialists of the highest class worked on its creation, which ensured the high quality of the giant device. For more than 30 years, BTA has been maintaining its star watch. This telescope is capable of distinguishing 27th magnitude astronomical objects. Imagine the earth is flat; and then, if in Japan someone were lighting a cigarette, with a telescope it could be clearly seen.

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Cleaning the bottom of the pit. February 1966

After analyzing all the data, the site for the BTA telescope was a place at an altitude of 2100 meters near Mount Pastukhov, near the village of Zelenchukskaya, which is located in Karachay-Cherkessia - Nizhniy Arkhyz.

The azimuth type of the telescope mount was chosen according to the project. The total outer diameter of the mirror was 6.05 meters with a thickness of 65 cm, uniform over the entire area.

The telescope structure was assembled in the LOMO premises. A building with a height of over 50 meters was specially built for this. Cranes with a lifting capacity of 150 and 30 tons were installed inside the building. Before starting the assembly, a special foundation was made. The assembly itself began in January 1966 and lasted more than a year and a half, until September 1967.

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Construction of the telescope and tower foundations. April 1966

By the time a 6 m diameter mirror blank was manufactured, the accumulated experience in processing large optical blanks was small. For the processing of a 6-meter-diameter casting, when it was necessary to remove about 25 tons of glass from the workpiece, the existing experience turned out to be unsuitable, both due to low labor productivity and due to the presence of a real danger of the workpiece failure. Therefore, when processing a workpiece with a diameter of 6 m, it was decided to use a diamond tool.

Many of the telescope assemblies are unique for their time, such as the main spectrograph of the telescope, which has a diameter of 2 meters, a guiding system that includes a telescope guide and an integrated photo and television system, as well as a specialized computer to control the operation of the system.

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Summer 1968 Delivery of telescope parts

BTA is a world class telescope. The large light-collecting ability of the telescope makes it possible to study the structure, physical nature and evolution of extragalactic objects, to study in detail the physical characteristics and chemical composition of peculiar, non-stationary and magnetic stars, to study the processes of star formation and evolution of stars, to study the surfaces and chemical composition of the atmospheres of planets, trajectory measurements of artificial celestial bodies at great distances from the Earth and much more.

With its help, numerous unique studies of outer space were carried out: the most distant galaxies ever observed from Earth were studied, the mass of the local volume of the Universe was estimated, and many other mysteries of space were solved. Petersburg scientist Dmitry Vyshelovich, with the help of BTA, was looking for an answer to the question of whether fundamental constants drift in the Universe. Based on the observations, he made major discoveries... Astronomers from all over the world queue up to make observations with the famous Russian telescope. Thanks to BTA, domestic telescope builders and scientists have accumulated vast experience, which has made it possible to open the way to new technologies for studying the Universe.

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Installation of metal structures of the dome. 1968 year

The resolution of the telescope is 2000 times greater than the resolution of the human eye, and its radius of "sight" is 1.5 times higher than that of the largest US telescope at that time in Mount Palomar (8-9 billion light years versus 5-6, respectively ). It is no coincidence that BTA is called the "Eye of the Planet". Its dimensions are amazing: height - 42 meters, weight - 850 tons. Thanks to the special design of the hydraulic supports, the telescope "floats" on the thinnest oil cushion 0.1 mm thick, and a person is able to rotate it around its axis without the use of equipment and additional tools.

By the Government decree of March 25, 1960, the Lytkarino Optical Glass Plant was approved as the chief contractor for the development of the technological process for casting a mirror blank with a diameter of 6 m from glass and for the manufacture of a mirror blank. Two new production buildings were built specifically for this project. It was necessary to cast a glass blank with a mass of 70 tons, anneal it and carry out complex processing of all surfaces with the manufacture of 60 landing blind holes on the back side, a central hole, etc. Three years after the release of the Government Decree, a pilot production workshop was created. The task of the workshop included the installation and debugging of equipment, the development of the industrial process technology and the manufacture of mirror blanks.

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The complex of prospecting works carried out by LZOS specialists to create optimal processing modes made it possible to develop and implement a technology for manufacturing an industrial blank of the main mirror. The workpiece was processed for almost a year and a half. In 1963, a special carousel machine KU-158 was created by the Kolomna Heavy Machine Tool Plant to process the mirror. In parallel, extensive research work was carried out on the technology and control of this unique mirror. In June 1974, the mirror was ready for certification, which was successfully completed. In June 1974, the critical stage of transporting the mirror to the observatory began. On December 30, 1975, the act of the State Interdepartmental Commission on the acceptance into operation of the Large Azimuth Telescope was approved.

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1989 Assembly of the 1-meter Zeiss-1000 telescope

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Transportation of the upper part of the BTA pipe. August 1970

Today, there are new, more efficient astronomical systems with larger, including segmented, mirrors. But in terms of its parameters, our telescope is still considered one of the best in the world, so it is still in high demand among domestic and foreign scientists. Over the past years, it has undergone repeated modernization, primarily the management system has been improved. Today, observations can be made using a fiber-optic connection directly from the astronomers' town located in the valley.

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The Soviet optical industry of those times was not designed to solve such problems, therefore, to create a 6-meter mirror, a plant was specially built in Lytkarino near Moscow on the basis of a small workshop for the production of mirror reflectors.

The blank for such a mirror weighs 70 tons, the first few were "screwed up" because of the rush, as they had to cool for a very long time in order not to crack. "Successful" workpiece cooled down for 2 years and 19 days. Then, during its grinding, 15,000 carats of diamond tools were produced and almost 30 tons of glass were "erased". The fully finished mirror now weighs 42 tons.

The delivery of the mirror to the Caucasus is worth a separate mention .. First, a dummy of the same size and weight was sent to the destination, some adjustments were made to the route - 2 new river ports were built, 4 new bridges and 6 existing ones were strengthened and expanded, several hundred kilometers were laid new roads with perfect coverage.

The mechanical parts of the telescope were created at the Leningrad Optical and Mechanical Plant. The total mass of the telescope was 850 tons.

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But despite all efforts, the American Hale BTA-6 telescope failed to "surpass" in quality (that is, in resolution). Partly due to defects in the main mirror (the first pancake is still lumpy), partly due to the worse climatic conditions at its location.

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The installation in 1978 of a new mirror, already the third in a row, significantly improved the situation, but the weather conditions remained the same. In addition, the work is complicated by the too high sensitivity of the solid mirror to minor temperature fluctuations. “Doesn't see” - this is of course loudly said, until 1993 BTA-6 remained the world's largest telescope, and it is the largest in Eurasia to this day. With the new mirror, it was possible to achieve a resolution almost like that of the Hale, and the "penetrating power", that is, the ability to see faint objects in the BTA-6 is even greater (after all, the diameter is a whole meter larger).

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Over the 30-year period of operation of the telescope, its mirror was overcoated several times, which led to significant damage to the surface layer, its corrosion, and, as a result, up to 70% of the mirror's reflectivity was lost. And yet, BTA has been and remains a unique instrument of astronomers, both Russian and foreign. But in order to preserve its operability and increase its efficiency, it became necessary to reconstruct and update the main mirror. At present, the technology of shaping and unloading the mirror, which is owned by the specialists of OJSC LZOS, makes it possible to threefold improve its optical characteristics, including the angular resolution.

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Today, the technological process of shaping the surfaces of astronomical optical parts at the Lytkarino Optical Glass Plant has been brought to a new level, the achieved quality of surface shape deviations from the theoretical has increased by an order of magnitude due to the automation and modernization of production and computer control. Both the mechanical base and the technology for lightening and unloading mirrors have been significantly improved using modern computer equipment. The machines for milling, grinding and polishing the 6-meter mirror are also modernized in accordance with modern requirements. The optics controls have also been significantly improved.

The main mirror was delivered to the Lytkarino Optical Glass Plant. The milling phase has now been completed. The top layer about 8 mm thick was removed from the working surface. The mirror is transported into a heat-stabilized case and installed on an automated machine for grinding and polishing the working surface. According to the technical director - chief engineer of the enterprise S.P. Belousov, this will be the most difficult and crucial stage of mirror processing - it is necessary to obtain a surface shape with much smaller deviations from an ideal paraboloid than was achieved in the seventies. After that, the telescope mirror with an order of magnitude improved resolution and penetrating power will be able to serve Russian and world science for at least 30 more years.

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Among the specialists who participated in the manufacture of the mirror - mechanic Zhikharev A.G., optician Kaverin M.S., locksmith Panov V.G., milling cutter Pisarenko N.I. - they work to this day, transferring the rich experience of large-size optical instrumentation to young people. Most recently, the optician Bochmanov Yu.K., the milling machine operator Yegorov E.V. have gone on a well-deserved rest. (he re-milled the mirror last and this year).

Nobody else can do this kind of work in Russia. In the world, besides LZOS, there are only two companies that manufacture large-sized mirrors. These are the Optical Laboratory of the Steward Observatory (Arizona, USA) and SAGEM-REOSC (France) (8 m in diameter), but even there the towers for controlling the mirrors are shorter than required, since the radius of the BTA mirror is 48 meters.

Hello comrades. Something I will send you mainly spent objects, but garbage cans. Let's visit an active facility - a real astrophysical observatory with a huge telescope.

So, here it is, a special astrophysical observatory Russian Academy sciences, known as object code 115.
It is located in the North Caucasus at the foot of Mount Pastukhovaya in the Zelenchuksky region of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic of Russia (the village of Nizhny Arkhyz and the village of Zelenchukskaya). At present, the observatory is the largest Russian astronomical center for ground-based observations of the Universe, which has large telescopes: the six-meter optical reflector BTA and the RATAN-600 ring radio telescope. Founded in June 1966.


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This gantry crane was used to build the observatory.

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You can read in more detail http://www.sao.ru/hq/sekbta/40_SAO/SAO_40/SAO_40.htm here.


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The observatory was created as a center for collective use to ensure the operation of the optical telescope BTA (Large Azimuthal Telescope) with a mirror diameter of 6 meters and the RATAN-600 radio telescope with a ring antenna 600 meters in diameter, then the world's largest astronomical instruments. They were put into operation in 1975-1977 and are intended for studying objects of near and deep space by methods of ground astronomy.


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Looking at this futuristic door, you just want to go inside and feel all the power.


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Here we are inside.


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Before us is an old control panel. It doesn't seem to work.


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And here's the fun part. BTA - "large azimuth telescope". This miracle is the largest telescope in the world since 1975, when it surpassed the 5-meter Hale telescope of the Palomar Observatory, and until 1993, when the Keck telescope with a 10-meter segmented mirror went into operation.

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Yes,

this very Keck.

BTA is a reflective telescope. The main mirror, 605 cm in diameter, has the shape of a paraboloid of revolution. The focal length of the mirror is 24 meters, the weight of the mirror excluding the frame is 42 tons. The optical design of the BTA provides for operation at the main focus of the main mirror and two Nesmith focuses. In both cases, you can apply the aberration corrector.

The telescope is mounted on an alt-azimuth mount. The mass of the moving part of the telescope is about 650 tons. The total mass of the telescope is about 850 tons.

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Chief Designer - Doctor of Technical Sciences Bagrat Konstantinovich Ioannisiani (LOMO).

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The optical system of the telescope was manufactured at the Leningrad Optical and Mechanical Association. IN AND. Lenin (LOMO), Lytkarino Optical Glass Plant (LZOS), State Optical Institute named after V.I. S. I. Vavilova (GOI).
For its manufacture, even separate workshops were built, which had no analogues.
Do you know that?
- The blank for the mirror, cast in 1964, has been cooling for more than two years.
- For the processing of the workpiece, 12,000 carats of natural diamonds in the form of powder were used, processing with a grinding machine manufactured at the Kolomna Heavy Machine Tool Plant was carried out for 1.5 years.
- The mass of the mirror blank was 42 tons.
- In total, the creation of a unique mirror lasted for 10 years.

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The telescope's main mirror is thermally deformed, just like all huge telescopes of this type. If the temperature of the mirror changes faster than 2 ° per day, the resolution of the telescope drops by one and a half times. Therefore, special air conditioners are installed inside that maintain an optimal temperature regime. It is forbidden to open the telescope dome when the temperature difference outside and inside the tower is more than 10 °, since such temperature drops can lead to the destruction of the mirror.


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Plumb line

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Unfortunately, the North Caucasus is not the best place for such a mega-device. The fact is that in the mountains, open to all winds, there is very high turbulence of the atmosphere, which significantly impairs visibility and does not allow using the full power of this telescope.


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On May 11, 2007, the transportation of the first BTA main mirror to the Lytkarino Optical Glass Plant (LZOS), which manufactured it, was started for the purpose of deep modernization. The telescope now has a second main mirror. After processing in Lytkarino - removal of 8 millimeters of glass from the surface and re-polishing, the telescope should become one of the ten most accurate in the world. The modernization was completed in November 2017. Installation and start of research are scheduled for 2018.


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Hope you enjoyed the walk. We go to the exit.

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Decorated with "