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24-523: Construction on the Schmidt telescope began in 1939 and it was completed in 1948. It was named the Samuel Oschin telescope in 1986. Before that it was just called the 48 inches (1.2 m) Schmidt. In the mid-1980s, the corrector plate was replaced using glass with less chromatic aberration , producing higher quality images over a broader spectrum. Between 2000 and 2001, it was converted to use

48-524: A CCD imager. The corrector plate was recently replaced using glass that is transparent to a wider range of wavelengths. The telescope was originally hand-guided through one of two 10-inch-aperture (0.25 m) refracting telescopes mounted on either side. The camera is now fully automated and remote-controlled. The data collected are transmitted over the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN). It

72-527: A brother, Albert Oschin, and sister, Ruth Oschin Weiss. At the age of ten, he started working cleaning chimneys, which grew into a small business, employing other boys. He never completed high school, instead working with his father who was a painter, and then took a job at Briggs manufacturing, a tool and die company in Detroit . During World War II, he and his two brothers formed a tool and die company and won

96-636: A field of view of 7.8 square degrees, and was used for the Palomar Transient Factory . In 2017 the telescope became the host of the Zwicky Transient Facility . Unlike its predecessors, this was custom designed for the Oschin telescope and its wide field of view, using a 16×6144×6160 CCD array (606 megapixels) with a 47 square degree field of view. About half of the large photographic glass plate negatives exposed on

120-482: A large contract supplying airplane parts to the United States Army Air Forces , which eventually evolved to the manufacture of bombs. After the war, he converted his factory to the manufacture of furniture to support increased demand from returning soldiers. In 1946, he moved to Los Angeles and started an air conditioning business with his brother. Seeing the demand for housing, he started

144-869: A real estate development and construction company and was responsible for building one of the first planned communities in Oxnard . He then purchased the Savings and Loan Association in Pacoima, California , which he grew to 27 branches statewide. In 1974, he sold Savings and Loan Association to Allstate . Oschin continued to build low cost housing in conjunction with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) until his retirement. Oschin's successful business ventures in manufacturing, banking, investment, and real estate development enabled philanthropic work in many areas, including astronomy, medicine, education, and

168-604: A second telescope starting in 1991. The Keck I telescope began science observations in May 1993, while first light for Keck II occurred on April 27, 1996. The key advance that allowed the construction of the Keck telescopes was the use of active optics to operate smaller mirror segments as a single, contiguous mirror. A mirror of similar size cast of a single piece of glass could not be made rigid enough to hold its shape precisely; it would sag microscopically under its own weight as it

192-652: A son, Michael Oschin, and a daughter, Barbara Oschin Ellis. Oschin was a noted adventure traveler. He retraced Robert Peary 's voyage to the North Pole, paddled up the Amazon in a dugout canoe, and crossed the Alps on an elephant following the story of Hannibal . Keck Observatory The W. M. Keck Observatory is an astronomical observatory with two telescopes at an elevation of 4,145 meters (13,600 ft) near

216-637: A suite of cameras and spectrometers that allow observations across much of the visible and near-infrared spectrum. The Keck Observatory is managed by the California Association for Research in Astronomy, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization whose board of directors includes representatives from Caltech and the University of California . Construction of the telescopes was made possible through private grants of over $ 140 million from

240-492: Is programmed and operated primarily from Pasadena, California , with no operator on site, except to open and close the observatory dome. The first CCD camera installed was the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) camera, which had three separate 4k×4k sensors arranged in a north–south line with substantial (1°) gaps between them. The total field of view was 3.75 square degrees. From 2003 to 2007, it

264-813: The Mount Wilson Observatory Association (MWOA) and the Los Angeles Astronomical Society (LAAS), and the team then spent 13 weekends (more than one thousand hours) poring over the stacks, placing plates in protective sleeves, and packing them in more than 500 boxes that were transported to Palomar. All of the volunteers were presented with the gift of having asteroids named after them, compliments of Carolyn S. Shoemaker : 10028 Bonus , 12680 Bogdanovich , 13914 Galegant , 16452 Goldfinger , 19173 Virginiaterése , 20007 Marybrown , 21148 Billramsey , 22294 Simmons , 27706 Strogen , and 29133 Vargas . Mueller

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288-789: The W.M. Keck Foundation . The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) joined the partnership in October 1996 when Keck II commenced observations. Telescope time is allocated by the partner institutions. Caltech, the University of Hawaii System , and the University of California accept proposals from their own researchers; NASA accepts proposals from researchers based in the United States. Jerry Nelson , Keck Telescope project scientist, contributed to later multi-mirror projects until his death in June 2017. He conceived one of

312-819: The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, will be the permanent home of the Space Shuttle Endeavour , which is on temporary display in the Samuel Oschin Pavilion , which opened on October 30, 2012. Additionally, Oschin supported the Anti-Defamation League , The Jewish Home for the Aging , and Temple B'nai Hayim in Sherman Oaks, California . Oschin died on July 28, 2003. He is survived by his wife Lynda,

336-696: The arts. In 1981, he founded the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation. After a generous donation to Palomar Observatory , the 48-inch Schmidt telescope there was renamed for him. Other organisations named for him include the Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the planetarium at Griffith Observatory . A new addition to the California Science Center , to be called

360-556: The effects of gravity and other environmental and structural effects that can affect mirror shape. Each Keck telescope sits on an altazimuth mount . Most current 8–10 m class telescopes use altazimuth designs for their reduced structural requirements compared to older equatorial designs . Altazimuth mounting provides the greatest strength and stiffness with the least amount of steel, which, for Keck Observatory, totals about 270 tons per telescope, bringing each telescope's total weight to more than 300 tons. Two proposed designs for

384-521: The next generation 30 and 40 m telescopes use the same basic technology pioneered at Keck Observatory: a hexagonal mirror array coupled with an altazimuth mounting. Each of the two telescopes has a primary mirror with an equivalent diameter of 10 meters (32.8 ft or 394 in), slightly smaller than the Gran Telescopio Canarias whose primary mirror has an equivalent diameter of 10.4 meters. The telescopes are equipped with

408-500: The summit of Mauna Kea in the U.S. state of Hawaii . Both telescopes have 10 m (33 ft) aperture primary mirrors, and, when completed in 1993 (Keck I) and 1996 (Keck II), they were the largest optical reflecting telescopes in the world. They have been the third and fourth largest since 2006. With a concept first proposed in 1977, telescope designers Terry Mast, of the University of California, Berkeley , and Jerry Nelson of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory had been developing

432-527: The technology necessary to build a large, ground-based telescope. In 1985, Howard B. Keck of the W. M. Keck Foundation gave $ 70 million to fund the construction of the Keck ;I telescope, which began in September 1985. First light occurred on November 24, 1990, using 9 of the eventual 36 segments. When construction of the first telescope was well advanced, further donations allowed the construction of

456-444: The telescope, each segment is kept stable by a system of active optics , which uses extremely rigid support structures in combination with three actuators under each segment. During observation, the computer-controlled system of sensors and actuators dynamically adjusts each segment's position relative to its neighbors, keeping a surface shape accuracy of four nanometers . As the telescope moves, this twice-per-second adjustment counters

480-682: The telescope, some 19,000 in all, had been accumulating in the sub-basement of the Robinson building at the California Institute of Technology since 1949. In 2002, astronomer Jean Mueller approached Richard Ellis , the director of the Caltech Optical Observatories , to volunteer to the task of organizing the Oschin Telescope plate archive. Given the go-ahead, she recruited eleven volunteers from

504-646: Was also rewarded with a visit to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii . The Oschin Telescope was responsible for the discovery of 90377 Sedna on 2003-11-14 and Eris , the "10th Planet" on 2005-01-05 from images taken 2003-10-21. The peculiar Type Ia supernova SN 2002cx was discovered with the Oschin telescope on 2002-05-12, 21 UT. Other discoveries include 90482 Orcus (in 2004) and 50000 Quaoar (in 2002), both large trans-Neptune objects. In June 2011 it

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528-566: Was reported the telescope discovered 6 supernovae located 8 billion light years from Earth whose composition lacks hydrogen. This is different from normal supernovae, and will contribute to the research of star formation. Samuel Oschin Samuel Oschin (1914 – July 28, 2003), born in Dayton, Ohio , was a Los Angeles entrepreneur and philanthropist. Oschin was born to a Jewish family on July 18, 1914, in Dayton, Ohio . He has

552-567: Was the home of the Quasar Equatorial Survey Team camera. This consisted of 112 CCDs, each 2400×600 pixels (161 megapixels total), arranged in four columns of 28 (with gaps between), the largest CCD mosaic used in an astronomical camera at the time. The next camera installed (in 2009) was a 12,288 by 8,192 pixel mosaic (100 megapixel) originally built for the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope . This had

576-522: Was turned to different positions, causing aberrations in the optical path. In the Keck telescopes, each primary mirror is made of 36 hexagonal segments that work together as a unit. Each segment is 1.8 meters wide and 7.5 centimeters thick and weighs half a ton. The mirrors were made in Lexington, Massachusetts by Itek Optical Systems from Zerodur glass-ceramic by the German company Schott AG . On

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