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C. Donald Shane telescope
120-inch reflecting telescope

The C. Donald Shane telescope is a 120-inch reflecting telescope located at the Lick Observatory in San Jose, California. Named after the astronomer who secured funding from the California Legislature, it was commissioned in 1959 as the second-largest optical telescope worldwide. Its 10,000-pound mirror, originally made for the Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory, was sold below cost to Lick and polished on Mount Hamilton. The telescope features prime, Cassegrain, and coudé foci, and was later upgraded with an early adaptive optics system, enhancing its observational capabilities.

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Features

The telescope can be used with three different focal stations: wide field prime focus, coudé focus for high precision spectroscopy, or the intermediate cassegrain focus.

In the Shane dome there is a laser, whose light is sometimes visible with the naked eye, that the observatory beams from the Shane telescope into the night sky. The laser is part of the Lick Adaptive Optics (LAO) program, a joint project of the Lick Observatory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. LAO corrects for atmospheric turbulence either by using a natural guide star or by creating a sodium laser guide star, and using the observed motion of the guide star to direct distortion of a deformable mirror hundreds of times each second. The system produces images that are nearly equivalent to those obtained from space-based telescopes. Adaptive optics using natural guide stars has been in development since 1996, and using laser guide stars since 2001. Similar laser adaptive optics systems based on LAO have been installed on the University of California's two Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

Operation of the Kast instrument began in 1992, and it was upgraded in the 2010s.7 The Kast Double Spectrograph can detect spectrum from near-infrared to near-ultraviolet, and includes two sub-instruments.8

Instrumentation currently in operation at the Shane telescope includes:9

History

After WW2 ended, plans for a large reflecting telescope for the Lick observatory were realized by funding from the State of California in 1946.11 A 120 inch glass blank leftover from the Hale telescope was acquired, and ground to its figure at optical shops on the mountain.12

For Lick Observatory's first 55 years of operation, its astronomers relied on two telescopes built in the 19th century. Once considered giants in the field, they had become obsolete. International competition was mounting. The 120-inch reflector addition took 15 years to complete, being completed in 1959. It would be the second-largest telescope in the world, taking its place behind the then World's largest 200-inch Palomar Hale Telescope.

An adaptive optics system for the Shane was developed, utilizing an artificial star made by laser and a deformable mirror with actuators.13 This AO system was mounted at the f/17 cassegrain focus of the Shane telescope.14 The system could send light to a visible-light CCD or an infrared sensor (NICMOS III camera).15

The Shane telescope was tested in 1995 with a sodium laser to make an artificial light for the AO system; the laser utilizes a layer in the atmosphere that reacts with the light.16

In 2009, the Lick Observatory celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Shane telescope.17 The celebration included a ticketed event with a dinner and a lecture on exoplanets by an astronomer.18 In 2014, the observatory received a grant to upgrade the Kast instrument of the Shane telescope.19

In 2015, the company Google donated 1 million USD to the observatory over two years.20

Contemporaries on commissioning

The Shane telescope saw first light to a different world for large telescopes in 1959:

#Name / ObservatoryImageApertureAltitudeFirst LightSpecial advocate
1Hale Telescope Palomar Obs.200 inch 508 cm1713 m (5620 ft)1948George Ellery Hale John D. Rockefeller
2Shane Telescope Lick Observatory120 inch 305 cm1283 m (4209 ft)1959Nicholas Mayall C. Donald Shane
3Hooker Telescope Mount Wilson Obs.100 inch 254 cm1742 m (5715 ft)1917George Ellery Hale Andrew Carnegie
4Otto Struve Telescope McDonald Obs.82 inch 210 cm2,070 m 6791 ft1939Otto Struve

See also

References

  1. Mt. Hamilton Telescopes: Carnegie Double Astrograph http://www.ucolick.org/public/telescopes/shane.html ↩

  2. Mt. Hamilton Telescopes: Carnegie Double Astrograph http://www.ucolick.org/public/telescopes/shane.html ↩

  3. Mt. Hamilton Telescopes: Carnegie Double Astrograph http://www.ucolick.org/public/telescopes/shane.html ↩

  4. Mt. Hamilton Telescopes: Carnegie Double Astrograph http://www.ucolick.org/public/telescopes/shane.html ↩

  5. Mt. Hamilton Telescopes: Carnegie Double Astrograph http://www.ucolick.org/public/telescopes/shane.html ↩

  6. Mt. Hamilton Telescopes: Carnegie Double Astrograph http://www.ucolick.org/public/telescopes/shane.html ↩

  7. Lebow, Hilary. "Lick Observatory plans major upgrade for Shane Telescope". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2019-12-14. https://news.ucsc.edu/2014/12/kast-spectrograph.html ↩

  8. Lebow, Hilary. "Lick Observatory plans major upgrade for Shane Telescope". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2019-12-14. https://news.ucsc.edu/2014/12/kast-spectrograph.html ↩

  9. "Lick Observatory Shane Telescope web site". Retrieved 25 January 2017. http://www.ucolick.org/main/science/telescopes/shane.html ↩

  10. McGurk, Rosalie; et al. (2014). "Commissioning ShARCS: the Shane Adaptive optics infraRed Camera-Spectrograph for the Lick Observatory 3-m telescope". Proceedings of the SPIE. 9148: 91483A. arXiv:1407.8205. doi:10.1117/12.2057027. S2CID 118824898. Retrieved 25 January 2017. http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1891172 ↩

  11. "1964PASP...76...77S Page 84". articles.adsabs.harvard.edu. Bibcode:1964PASP...76...77S. Retrieved 2019-11-18. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1964PASP...76...77S/0000084.000.html ↩

  12. "1964PASP...76...77S Page 84". articles.adsabs.harvard.edu. Bibcode:1964PASP...76...77S. Retrieved 2019-11-18. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1964PASP...76...77S/0000084.000.html ↩

  13. Appenzeller, Immo (2012-12-06). Reports on Astronomy: Transactions of the International Astronomical Union Volume XXIIIA. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9789401157629. 9789401157629 ↩

  14. Appenzeller, Immo (2012-12-06). Reports on Astronomy: Transactions of the International Astronomical Union Volume XXIIIA. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9789401157629. 9789401157629 ↩

  15. Appenzeller, Immo (2012-12-06). Reports on Astronomy: Transactions of the International Astronomical Union Volume XXIIIA. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9789401157629. 9789401157629 ↩

  16. Leverington, David (2017). Observatories and Telescopes of Modern Times. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521899932. 9780521899932 ↩

  17. Stephens, Tim; Writer 459-2495, Staff. "Lick Observatory celebrates 50th anniversary of Shane Telescope". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2019-11-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) https://news.ucsc.edu/2009/09/3172.html ↩

  18. Stephens, Tim; Writer 459-2495, Staff. "Lick Observatory celebrates 50th anniversary of Shane Telescope". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2019-11-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) https://news.ucsc.edu/2009/09/3172.html ↩

  19. "Lick Observatory plans major upgrade for Shane Telescope". https://news.ucsc.edu/2014/12/kast-spectrograph.html ↩

  20. "Google gives Lick Observatory $1 million – Astronomy Now". https://astronomynow.com/2015/02/10/google-gives-lick-observatory-1-million/ ↩