Messier telescope inaugurated at St. Joseph’s College

TIRUCHI

A Messier Telescope designed by Stephen Hawking's Innovation Club, which can resolve objects separated by a distance of 8.457 arcseconds, was inaugurated at the Department of Physics, St. Joseph's College, on Friday.

According to P. Christuraj, Club Coordinator, double stars, nebulae, craters of the moon and Apollo landing sites, besides Saturn’s rings and crescent of Venus have been observed through the telescope.

Plans were afoot to study the atmosphere of Venus, Jupiter and sun, he said, exuding confidence that visible electromagnetic spectrum of each individual stars could be collected by using a stellar grating and a CCD (Charge-coupled device) sensor, mounting them on our messier telescope. Messier has a 250 mm diameter of parabolic primary optical mirror that collects a large amount of light and has a focal ratio of f/5 which is a fast telescope. The fine arrangement of the optical components give us a sharp image of the heavenly bodies which is crucial for useful astronomical studies, N. Ravi, Head, Department of Physics, said.

The telescope was inaugurated by Collector S. Sivarasu in the presence of Principal Rev. Fr. Xavier Arockiasamy.

K. Balakrishnan, Founder, Trichy Astro Club, delivered a talk on basic astronomy and telescopes on the occasion.