Word circulated that the observatory was open so I popped along one Saturday afternoon with Ella.
Slight struggle getting inside as I like to make a meal of everything but it’s great to see something completely different. There’s lots of rubbish been dumped in there and it was really musty. The stairs were an absolute killer and the upper floors aren’t the safest. There were quite a few dead and decaying birds sat on nests up there. Someone had got the door open to the balcony Thing that runs around the outside, I looked but didn’t step out. I’m not the best with heights and the thought of the wood being so rotten and breaking under foot was enough to keep me from stepping out. I then got in a bit of a panic and had to make my way back down to the ground floor, I felt like the building was swaying but I believe it was just the dodgy floors.
The old control panel with names written in the dust over the years was great however a week or so later I saw a picture where someone had rubbed all the names out for some spiteful reason no doubt.
I’m not overly happy with my photos, it was really dark in there and even my decent light wasn’t good enough to get great pics.
The observatory has now been sealed back up.
History -
Sir Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 at Woolsthorpe Manor House near Grantham, Lincolnshire. He was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. In the 1660s he observed that a prism dispersed white light into a spectrum of colours. From this work he concluded that any telescope using lenses (refracting telescope) would suffer from the same colour dispersion (chromatic aberration). He therefore constructed a telescope using reflective surfaces instead of lenses which did in fact solve the problem of chromatic aberration.
Celebrations for the tercentenary of Newton’s birth were put on hold because of the Second World War but in 1946 the President of the Royal Society announces funding for a 100-inch telescope for British astronomers to use. It was to be called the Isaac Newton telescope and would be sited at the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) in Herstmonceux. The telescope would have 7 times the light-grasp of existing telescopes in Britain at the time (the two 36-inches) and would prevent a brain drain of practical astronomers to the US which was already much better endowed with large telescopes. The project was funded jointly by the Treasury and the Admiralty and a committee of the Royal Society was set up to progress the building of the telescope. It was RGO staff, however, who were to subsequently maintain and operate the telescope.
The biggest part of a telescope such as the INT is the main mirror, called the primary, and here the project got off to a good start. In 1949 an American charity offered Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal at the time, a spare Pyrex disc suitable for the telescope for free. It had been cast in 1936 by the same firm that made the 200 inch mirror for Palomar (Corning Glass Works) and had been intended for a telescope in Michigan that was never built. The 5 tonne disk was brought to Britain and Spencer Jones was thereafter known as Scrounger-Jones in some US circles – according to Fred Hoyle.
For reasons hard to explain nothing happened for many years. Maybe it was because the project was in the hands of a committee – Spencer Jones could not be seen to be trying to take it over. They argued endlessly about what sort of telescope it was to be and at one stage the money was withdrawn.
When Richard Woolley became Astronomer Royal he took the project by the scruff of the neck. In 1959 Howard Grubb, Parsons and Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne were commissioned to design and construct the telescope and immediately set about grinding the mirror. It took more than a year for this process and 1,800 lb (816 kg) of pulverised glass was discarded. There were problems in the process due to cracking and crazing of the mirror which had to be filled with araldite to stabilize it for polishing.
In 1967 the Queen came to Herstmonceux to inaugurate the telescope. It was hoped she would look at Saturn through it, but it rained – no doubt reinforcing the views of all those who were wondering about the wisdom of building a world-class telescope in lowland Sussex, a decision that was 50% politics.
At the time the giant dome was in open countryside. Richard Woolley commissioned the planting of the trees that now surround the dome.
Technical aspects of the telescope -
Weight: 9,000 lb (4082 Kg)
Diameter of the primary mirror: 98.2 inches (2.5 metres)
Thickness of the primary mirror:16.1 inches (41 cm)
Prime focus: f/3 (observer rides in a capsule in the mouth of the telescope)
Cassegrain focus: f/14.1 (observer rides in a chair slung below the mirror)
Coudé focus: f/32.3 (observer at a fixed focus one floor below the telescope)
The telescope was placed on a platform 48 feet high to raise it above the surrounding mists. The telescope was kept at the prevailing night temperature during the day whatever the season so that convective air currents didn’t disturb star images.
There was a heated control room so the astronomers didn’t freeze half to death in the winter. The model of Isaac Newton’s original telescope was set up alongside the main telescope in a glass case, and someone with a sense of humour added a note at the bottom
“When main telescope fails, break glass.”
Dismantling the INT in the late 1970s was the beginning of the end for Herstmonceux. With the telescope transferred to La Palma there was little cause for keeping the estate on. Astronomy was changing. With cheap air travel astronomers could work in little offices anywhere and jet off to the big mountaintop observatories around the world for their observing sessions.
So with much heartache and recrimination Herstmonceux closed in 1990, a sad end to the all-too-brief Golden Age of Astronomy at Herstmonceux. The remnants of the observatory moved to an office block in Cambridge, and finally, in 1998 it closed altogether as an observing establishment, after 323 years.
Slight struggle getting inside as I like to make a meal of everything but it’s great to see something completely different. There’s lots of rubbish been dumped in there and it was really musty. The stairs were an absolute killer and the upper floors aren’t the safest. There were quite a few dead and decaying birds sat on nests up there. Someone had got the door open to the balcony Thing that runs around the outside, I looked but didn’t step out. I’m not the best with heights and the thought of the wood being so rotten and breaking under foot was enough to keep me from stepping out. I then got in a bit of a panic and had to make my way back down to the ground floor, I felt like the building was swaying but I believe it was just the dodgy floors.
The old control panel with names written in the dust over the years was great however a week or so later I saw a picture where someone had rubbed all the names out for some spiteful reason no doubt.
I’m not overly happy with my photos, it was really dark in there and even my decent light wasn’t good enough to get great pics.
The observatory has now been sealed back up.
History -
Sir Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 at Woolsthorpe Manor House near Grantham, Lincolnshire. He was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. In the 1660s he observed that a prism dispersed white light into a spectrum of colours. From this work he concluded that any telescope using lenses (refracting telescope) would suffer from the same colour dispersion (chromatic aberration). He therefore constructed a telescope using reflective surfaces instead of lenses which did in fact solve the problem of chromatic aberration.
Celebrations for the tercentenary of Newton’s birth were put on hold because of the Second World War but in 1946 the President of the Royal Society announces funding for a 100-inch telescope for British astronomers to use. It was to be called the Isaac Newton telescope and would be sited at the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) in Herstmonceux. The telescope would have 7 times the light-grasp of existing telescopes in Britain at the time (the two 36-inches) and would prevent a brain drain of practical astronomers to the US which was already much better endowed with large telescopes. The project was funded jointly by the Treasury and the Admiralty and a committee of the Royal Society was set up to progress the building of the telescope. It was RGO staff, however, who were to subsequently maintain and operate the telescope.
The biggest part of a telescope such as the INT is the main mirror, called the primary, and here the project got off to a good start. In 1949 an American charity offered Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal at the time, a spare Pyrex disc suitable for the telescope for free. It had been cast in 1936 by the same firm that made the 200 inch mirror for Palomar (Corning Glass Works) and had been intended for a telescope in Michigan that was never built. The 5 tonne disk was brought to Britain and Spencer Jones was thereafter known as Scrounger-Jones in some US circles – according to Fred Hoyle.
For reasons hard to explain nothing happened for many years. Maybe it was because the project was in the hands of a committee – Spencer Jones could not be seen to be trying to take it over. They argued endlessly about what sort of telescope it was to be and at one stage the money was withdrawn.
When Richard Woolley became Astronomer Royal he took the project by the scruff of the neck. In 1959 Howard Grubb, Parsons and Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne were commissioned to design and construct the telescope and immediately set about grinding the mirror. It took more than a year for this process and 1,800 lb (816 kg) of pulverised glass was discarded. There were problems in the process due to cracking and crazing of the mirror which had to be filled with araldite to stabilize it for polishing.
In 1967 the Queen came to Herstmonceux to inaugurate the telescope. It was hoped she would look at Saturn through it, but it rained – no doubt reinforcing the views of all those who were wondering about the wisdom of building a world-class telescope in lowland Sussex, a decision that was 50% politics.
At the time the giant dome was in open countryside. Richard Woolley commissioned the planting of the trees that now surround the dome.
Technical aspects of the telescope -
Weight: 9,000 lb (4082 Kg)
Diameter of the primary mirror: 98.2 inches (2.5 metres)
Thickness of the primary mirror:16.1 inches (41 cm)
Prime focus: f/3 (observer rides in a capsule in the mouth of the telescope)
Cassegrain focus: f/14.1 (observer rides in a chair slung below the mirror)
Coudé focus: f/32.3 (observer at a fixed focus one floor below the telescope)
The telescope was placed on a platform 48 feet high to raise it above the surrounding mists. The telescope was kept at the prevailing night temperature during the day whatever the season so that convective air currents didn’t disturb star images.
There was a heated control room so the astronomers didn’t freeze half to death in the winter. The model of Isaac Newton’s original telescope was set up alongside the main telescope in a glass case, and someone with a sense of humour added a note at the bottom
“When main telescope fails, break glass.”
Dismantling the INT in the late 1970s was the beginning of the end for Herstmonceux. With the telescope transferred to La Palma there was little cause for keeping the estate on. Astronomy was changing. With cheap air travel astronomers could work in little offices anywhere and jet off to the big mountaintop observatories around the world for their observing sessions.
So with much heartache and recrimination Herstmonceux closed in 1990, a sad end to the all-too-brief Golden Age of Astronomy at Herstmonceux. The remnants of the observatory moved to an office block in Cambridge, and finally, in 1998 it closed altogether as an observing establishment, after 323 years.
