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William Keel <keel@bildad.astr.ua.edu>,
Joseph Lazio <jlazio@patriot.net>,
Steve Willner <swillner@cfa.harvard.edu>, Jennifer Imamura
The "largest" telescope is a bit difficult to determine. One can
obtain many different answers, depending upon the adjectives placed in
front of "largest." Nonetheless, what follows is one such list.
A list of astronomical instruments is also at
<URL:http://www.futureframe.de/astro/instr/index.html>, and a list of
large optical telescopes is at
<URL:http://www.seds.org/billa/bigeyes.html>.
A list of space-based observatories is at
<URL:http://www.seds.org/~spider/oaos/oaos.html>.
(Optical/Infrared telescopes, nighttime)
The list below gives the largest optical telescopes operating today.
For complicated pupil shapes, the effective aperture diameter is
given. Location is geographic; we omit most organizational details,
amusing and intricate as they may be. The list has been truncated at
3 m because there are so many telescopes of that size or smaller.
URL's are given where known.
Aperture Name Location
10.0 Keck I Mauna Kea, Hawaii
(mirror composed of 36 segments)
<URL:http://astro.caltech.edu/mirror/keck/index.html>
6.5 Multiple Mirror Mt. Hopkins, Arizona
(6 mirrors, 1.8 m each; see also B.03)
<URL:http://sculptor.as.arizona.edu/foltz/www/mmt.html>
6.0 BTA Nizhny Arkhyz, Russia
(Bolshoi Teleskop Azimutalnyi = Large Altazimuth Telescope)
<URL:http://www.sao.ru/>
5.0 Hale Palomar Mountain, California
<URL:http://astro.caltech.edu/observatories/palomar/public/index.html>
4.2 William Herschel La Palma, Canary Islands
<URL:http://ing.iac.es/WHT.html>
4.0 Victor Blanco Cerro Tololo, Chile
<URL:http://www.ctio.noao.edu/4m/base4m.html>
4.0 Mayall Kitt Peak, Arizona
<URL:http://www.noao.edu/kpno/kpno.html>
3.9 Anglo-Australian Siding Spring, Australia
<URL:http://www.aao.gov.au/>
3.8 UK Infrared Mauna Kea, Hawaii
<URL:http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/UKIRT/>
3.6 ESO Cerro La Silla, Chile
<URL:http://www.ls.eso.org/>
3.6 Canada-France-Hawaii Mauna Kea, Hawaii
<URL:http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/>
3.5 New Technology Cerro La Silla, Chile
<URL:http://www.eso.org/NTT/>
3.5 MPI-CAHA Calar Alto, Spain
<URL:http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/CAHA/>
3.5 ARC Apache Point, New Mexico (mostly remote control)
<URL:http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/>
3.5 WIYN Kitt Peak, Arizona
<URL:http://www.noao.edu/wiyn/>
3.5 Starfire Kirtland AFB, New Mexico
<URL:http://www.sor.plk.af.mil/default.html>
3.0 Shane Mount Hamilton, California
<URL:
http://cgi.irving.org/cgi-bin/irving-cgi-bin/xplore.pl?lick+shnentry+A+M
>
3.0 NASA IRTF Mauna Kea, Hawaii
<URL:http://irtf.ifa.hawaii.edu/>
Other telescopes of note:
Solar Telescope:
Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG), six sites around the world
for velocity imaging
http://helios.tuc.noao.edu/gonghome.html
Largest single dish radio telescope: Arecibo Observatory
(Nat. Astron. & Ionosphere Center, Cornell U.) 305-m, Puerto Rico
<URL:http://www.naic.edu/>
Largest fully-steerable single dish radio telescope: Max Planck
Institut fuer Radioastronomie, 100 m, Effelsburg, Germany
<URL:http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/effberg.html>
Largest millimeter wave radio telescope: Nobeyama Radio Observatory,
45m, Japan
<URL:http://radio.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp/NAO/nobeyama.html>
Largest sub-millimeter radio telescope: James Clerk Maxwell Telescope
(Joint Astron. Center = UK, Canada, Netherlands), Mauna Kea, 15 m
<URL:http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/JCMT/>
Largest (connected-element) radio interferometric arrays:
Very Large Array (NRAO, New Mexico),
27 dishes, each 26.4 m effective diameter
The maximum separation between antennas is ~35 km.
<URL:http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/vla/html/VLAhome.shtml>
MERLIN (NRAL, University of Manchester, UK)
up to 8 dishes, various specifications.
The maximum separation between antennae is 217 km (between the
Cambridge and Knockin dishes).
<URL:http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/merlin/>
[MERLIN actually uses radio links between the antenna elements, so
maybe it should go into a separate category.]
Longest-baseline (dedicated) radio interferometric array: Very Long
Baseline Array (NRAO), 10 dishes, each 26.4 m effective diameter,
United States. The maximum separation between antennas is ~8600 km,
between the islands of St. Croix and Hawaii.
<URL:http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/vlba/html/VLBA.html>
HALCA (ISAS), 8 m dish, in Earth orbit
<URL:http://www.vsop.isas.ac.jp/>
Infrared:
Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) (ESA)
<URL:http://isowww.estec.esa.nl/>
Ultraviolet:
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) (NASA)
<URL:http://www.cea.berkeley.edu/>
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) [defunct] (NASA, PPARC and ESA)
<URL:http://www.vilspa.esa.es/iue/iue.html>
X-ray:
Chandra, the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (NASA)
<URL:http://asc.harvard.edu/>
X-Ray Astronomy Satellite (SAX) (ESA)
<URL:http://www.sdc.asi.it/>
X-Ray Timing Explorer (XTE) (NASA), 2 instruments: PCA & HEXTE
<URL:http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/XTE.html>
ASCA/ASTRO-D (ISAS)
<URL:http://www.astro.isas.ac.jp/xray/mission/asca/ascaE.html>
Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) (MPE)
<URL:http://wave.xray.mpe.mpg.de/rosat/>
Einstein, the second High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAO-B) [defunct]
(NASA), 5 instruments: IPC, HRI, SSS, FPCS, & OGS
<URL:http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/einstein.html>
Gamma-ray:
Fred Lawrence Whipple Gamma-Ray Observatory (SAO), a 10 m and 11 m
instrument
<URL:http://linmax.sao.arizona.edu/help/FLWO/whipple.html>
CANGAROO (U. Adelaide & Nippon), 4 4-m cameras
<URL:http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/astrophysics/cangaroo.html>
Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (NASA) [space-based],
4 instruments: OSSE, EGRET, COMPTEL, & BATSE
<URL:http://cossc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cossc/cgro.html>
Cosmic ray:
The High Resolution Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector HiRes
<URL:http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/astrophysics/FlysEye.html>
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Last Update May 13 2007 @ 00:21 AM