The Harlan J. Smith Telescope is a telescope located at the McDonald Observatory, in Texas, in the United States. This telescope is one of several research telescopes that are part of the University of Texas at Austin observatory perched on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of west Texas. The telescope was completed in 1968 with substantial NASA assistance, and is named after Harlan James Smith, the first Texas director of McDonald Observatory. Smith was the Observatory Director for 26 years.
Vandalism damage The telescope was the victim of an act of vandalism in February 1970. A newly hired worker suffered a mental breakdown and brought a hand gun into the observatory. After firing one shot at his supervisor, the worker then fired the remaining rounds into the Primary Mirror. The holes effectively reduced the telescope to the equivalent of a 106-inch telescope (or about 2.5 centimeters less), but did not affect the quality of the telescope's images, only the amount of light it can collect.Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy & Spaceflight home page - Accessed 28 March 2006REPORT ON THE 2.7-METER REFLECTOR. Accessed 31 March 2022.
Observations The telescope has been used to observe many things. Some achievements includes the stars BD+17°3248 and XO-1.
Jorge Meléndez of the Australian National University and Iván Ramírez of the University of Texas at Austin used the telescope to discover that star HIP 56948 is a near twin of the Sun, based on a comparison of their chemical element abundances.
The Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph-W (VIRUS-W), an integral field spectrograph, was used in 2021 to find that the Leo 1 dwarf galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.A Nearby Dwarf Galaxy has a Surprisingly Massive Black Hole in its Heart
Contemporaries on commissioning Four largest telescopes 1968:
# Name /Observatory Image Aperture Altitude FirstLight Special advocate 1 Hale TelescopePalomar Observatory 200 inch508 cm 1713 m(5620 ft) 1949 Edwin Hubble 2 C. Donald Shane telescopeLick Observatory 120 inch305 cm 1283 m(4209 ft) 1959 Nicholas U. MayallC. Donald Shane 3 Harlan J. Smith TelescopeMcDonald Observatory 107 in270 cm 2070 m(6791 ft) 1968 Harlan J. Smith 4 Shajn 2.6 m (Crimean 102 inch)Crimean Astrophysical Observatory 102 in260 cm 600 m(1969 ft) 1961
See also List of largest optical reflecting telescopes
References
Telescope Shot