Optical Telescopes Enable Vital Astrophysical Research

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Optical Telescopes Enable Vital Astrophysical Research

Advances in astronomy are directly related to changing means of observation and our expanding understanding of the universe through the examination of the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by the objects of what's often referred to as the "cosmic zoo." The optical domain has traditionally preferred a body heated to temperatures of hundreds to thousands of degrees - that is the case for most of the planetary bodies and stars - emitting most of its radiation in the visible or near infrared parts of the spectrum. The implementation of large optical telescopes sensitive to these wavelengths is therefore imperative for astrophysical research.

Succeeding the instruments built in the 1970s and 1980s, a new generation of large ground optical telescopes came to be: The first one, the Keck-I, with an aperture of 8.2 m, was set in to service in May 1993 and was followed by many other instruments with openings of more than eight meters.

An optical telescope (from the Greek (tele) meaning 'far' and (skopein) meaning "look see") is an optical instrument for increasing the brightness and the apparent size of objects to observe. The role as receiver of light is often more important than the magnification as it allows a glimpse of celestial objects visible or invisible hard spot with the naked eye.

These telescopes are mainly used in astronomy because their settings do not make it favorable for the observations of very distant objects and those moving relatively slowly.

A linguistic accuracy may be needed here because of possible confusion in the use and translation of the word telescope, especially when consulting documentation or manuals in English as this word refers to two types of optical telescope instruments:

* One, the "refracting optical telescope" means the telescope whose objective consists of a set of lenses, either only one term diopter (refractive)
* The other, "Reflecting telescope" means an observation device whose mirror (reflection) is a key component.

The telescope was designed in Italy in 1586; this invention is very likely due to the optician Giambattista della Porta. In August 21, 1609 the Italian astronomer Galileo presented at the top of the tower, the first telescope to the Doge Leonardo Donato and members of the Senate His fellow German Johannes Kepler perfected the principle by providing an optical two convex lenses.
Replica of the telescope 6 inch Isaac Newton presented to the Royal Society in 1672.

In a telescope, a concave mirror is used to form the image. In 1663, the Scottish mathematician James Gregory was the first to propose the formula of the telescope with a magnification due to the secondary. Nevertheless, Mersenne himself had anticipated a system in which primary and secondary were parabolic; the exit pupil was located on the secondary, which served as the eyepiece, but the field was very low.

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Journal Showcases Dying Art of the Research Paper

“Most kids don’t know how to write, don’t know any history, and that’s a disgrace,” Mr. Fitzhugh said. “Writing is the most dumbed-down subject in our schools.”

His mood brightens, however, when talk turns to the occasionally brilliant work of the students whose heavily footnoted history papers appear in his quarterly, The Concord Review. Over 23 years, the review has printed 924 essays by teenagers from 44 states and 39 nations.

The review’s exacting standards have won influential admirers. William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions, said he keeps a few issues in his Cambridge office to inspire applicants. Harvard considers it “something that’s impressive,” like winning a national math competition, if an applicant’s essay has appeared in the review, he said.

That reputation has always been bigger than revenues. Last year, income from 1,400 subscriptions plus charitable donations totaled $131,000 — about $5,400 short of total expenses, even though Mr. Fitzhugh paid himself only $18,000. This year, with donors less generous in the recession, Mr. Fitzhugh had to stop printing hard copies of the review, publishing its most recent issues only online, at tcr.org.

The term paper was once an important feature of American secondary education, requiring students to dig deeply and write at length. Mr. Fitzhugh said that most public school teachers have stopped assigning such papers — a shift that he attributed mostly to the fact that teachers have so many students and so little time.

Still, hundreds of earnest students send Mr. Fitzhugh papers every year, hoping to win his stamp of approval.

In the most recent issue, a senior from Montclair, N.J., writes of Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure as a New York police commissioner; a New Orleans student profiles a 19th-century transcendentalist philosopher; and a senior from Seoul documents the oppression of Korean residents on a North Pacific island.

Pamela Ban was a junior at Thomas Worthington High School in Ohio when Mr. Fitzhugh picked her paper on Chinese economic reform for the summer 2008 issue. Researching it as an independent study project with her teacher, Mark McCort, Ms. Ban said, was a transformative learning experience. But it puzzled her classmates.

“They were in disbelief, like, ‘Why would you want to do more work like that?’?” said Ms. Ban, who now studies applied math and economics at Harvard.

Mr. Fitzhugh, a Harvard graduate himself, taught history for a decade at Concord-Carlisle High School in Massachusetts. When he started teaching in 1977, he was advised by colleagues to assign only short papers, five to seven pages — if at all.

But well into his teaching career, he received a high school sophomore’s thoroughly researched, 28-page paper on America’s strategic nuclear balance with the Soviet Union.

“That taught me I hadn’t been asking kids to work as hard as they could,” Mr. Fitzhugh recalled.

In 1987, he put up most of his modest savings to start publishing the review.

One of its earliest cheerleaders was Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who before his death in 1997 wrote at least two newspaper columns and personal letters to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the MacArthur Foundation, and Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, extolling the review and urging them to provide it with financial support.

“We know that most of the youngsters in our schools don’t write very much or very well,” Mr. Shanker wrote to the endowment’s president, Lynne Cheney, in 1991. “There are probably teachers who don’t believe their students are capable of putting together a decent paragraph. The Concord Review shows them how much our students are capable of.”

Another admirer was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the historian.

“The Concord Review has done an extraordinary thing in providing an organ, a medium, for first-class papers done in high schools,” Mr. Schlesinger says in a 2004 videotape that Mr. Fitzhugh has posted on the review’s Web site.

Despite all the praise, Mr. Fitzhugh has never been able to put the review on solid financial footing.

One reason is that he has been unable to persuade more than just a few of the nation’s 24,000 public secondary schools to subscribe, at $40 a year.

Some educators may see the review as a showcase only for an elite. All but four of the 22 essays published in the two most recent issues, for example, were by private school students.

But it was not always so. In the review’s first decade, more than a third of the essays were from public school students. Mr. Fitzhugh said he would love to publish more from public school students, but does not get many exemplary submissions.

“It’s not my fault,” he said. “They’re not doing the work.”

He recently asked the head of a history department at a New Jersey high school if he assigned research papers.

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