Great Melbourne Telescope
In 1869, the largest fully-steerable telescope the world had ever seen was built in Melbourne. Known as the Great Melbourne Telescope, it boasted a speculum metal mirror of 122 cm (48 inches). The Victorian Goverment at the time spent £5000 for the construction of this telescope and from 1869 until 1908, the Great Melbourne Telescope was the largest steerable, reflecting telescope in the world.
The GMT House (the building that the telescope lived) is in fact where the Astronomical Society of Victoria still has the member’s meetings; not much is left from the old telescope though these days, but the building itself is a true timecapsule.
(images removed)
Sadly, the Great Melbourne Telescope (what was left of it) was destroyed during the Canberra bush fires of January 2003.
chris on July 26th 2004 in Uncategorized
3 Responses to “Great Melbourne Telescope”
PC responded on 27 Jul 2004 at 7:37 pm #
They are great photos. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words…….
Wonder if those people ever thought we would be traveling into space as much as the recent events??
Ps: browser using firefox. very kool, but just some slight issues on some sites. But hey…I’ve switch2Fox…
Brian Greig responded on 11 Jan 2005 at 6:33 am #
Do you the copyright of the 4 images in your collection about the G.M.T.
Regards
Brian
chris responded on 12 Jan 2005 at 11:26 pm #
The images were sent in by other members and what was on public domain; it didn’t see any copyrights noted however I didn’t do any extensive searching. I have removed the images from this site until this is resolved.