Stars & Specula

Friday 3 March 2017

We had a great evening with the Museum of the History of Science demonstrating the use of different historical telescopes. Unfortunately cloud and rain meant we had to relocate inside the museum, but over 50 visitors were still able to try out the different telescopes (just looking at Blackwell's bookshop over the road instead of the Moon and Venus!).

If you weren't able to make it to the event, you can watch Dr Stephen Johnson from Museum of the History of Science with Christopher Taylor from HCO talking about the historical telescopes:

Click here to find out more about the Museum of the History of Science's other upcoming events »

 

 

 

Stars & Specula

Friday 3 March 2017, 6pm to 7:30pm
Sheldonian Courtyard by the
Museum of the History of Science, Broad St., Oxford

A joint event of Museum of the History of Science and HCO, providing a chance for participants to compare the actual performance of ancient and modern telescopes. If the evening is fine, we will be able to see just how the views of the Moon and Venus in a 6-inch speculum-metal reflector of circa 1840 stand side-by-side comparison with those in a modern telescope. This is an extremely rare opportunity to observe with such an antique instrument (provided by HCO), most comparable telescopes being either locked away permanently in museums or now completely unfit for use: this one is still in operation and in full working order.

The Museum will simultaneously be demonstrating the use of replicas of very early lens-telescopes such as those built and used by Galileo.

This event is drop-in and there is no need to register. If the sky is clouded over, we will be demonstrating the different telescopes inside the Museum of the History of Science instead.

Please note, the event will end promptly at 7.30pm.

Click here to find out how to get to the Museum
Click here to visit the Museum of the History of Science event page


The speculum-metal 6-inch Cassegrain

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