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Stony Ridge
Telescope Makers |
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Right: A very early George Carroll Astrograph made in 1953 is here shown in the optical shop of
astronomer and telescope collector, John Briggs. This telescope
was built for George Moyen, another of Stony Ridge's originating
founding members.
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Below: A 12-inch Cassegrain optical tube assembly built by John Terlep; mount
by George Carroll. This instrument was donated to Stony Ridge Observatory by the family of John Terlep.
Below Right: A 12-inch Cassegrain built by George Carroll. This
telescope is housed in a private observatory in Escondido, CA.
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The
first large reflector built by George
Carroll was this 16.5-inch (0.40 m) Newtonian. George donated
this instrument to Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California
in 1957. Work on Stony Ridge's 30-inch was begun shortly after
the completion of this scope.
Westmont
College dedicated this instrument in 1957, and named the observatory
building that housed it on campus the Carroll Observatory.
Westmont
College suffered major fire damage from the "Tea" wildfire
a few years back. The 16.5-inch Carroll mirror was destroyed in
this fire.
Today,
the surviving 16.5-inch telescope, without a primary mirror, is
in retirement at Westmont, but the Carroll
Observatory was recently rebuilt and currently houses its
own 24-inch Keck Telescope.
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(Right
and 3 Below) This is the configuration of the 30-inch Stony Ridge
Observatory's Newtonian/Cassegrain reflector shortly after its
completion in 1963. It was designed by George
Carroll and built by the members of
Stony Ridge Observatory. A documentary
film clip can be viewed on this website which follows the
construction of this telescope and the observatory that houses
it.
The
seemingly complicated details in the machinery shown in the photos
below were designed to enable differential tracking speeds, both
in Right Ascension (east-west) and Declination (north-south),
to track a comet's motion for example.
It
was in this configuration, and using the Cassegrain focus, that
the telescope was used to produce high-resolution images of the
lunar surface. SRO's
Lunar Mapping Project (LMP), that ran from February 1964 to
August 1967, produced images of the lunar surface that were sent
to the Aeronautical Charts and Information Center (ACIC) in St.
Louis (a division of the U.S. Air Force). The ACIC produced high-resolution
charts used for selecting candidate landing sites for the United
States' Apollo manned lunar landing missions. The images
from this telescope were used in the production of at least eight
of these charts. (SRO
is credited in the Portrayal section on this example
- 2.3MB jpg chart of the LAC #44 Cleomedes region of the Moon.)
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George Carroll (far right) displays one of his solar telescope
designs at the Riverside Telescope Makers' Convention (RTMC)
in 1969.
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George Carroll, designed and built this spar telescope for solar
studies at the University of Tel Aviv in 1969.
Other spar telescopes were built and installed over Robinson
Hall at the California Institute of Technology, and at the Lockheed
Solar Observatory, the Big Bear Solar Observatory, Ottawa River
Solar Observatory, and perhaps others. |
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This Carroll 5-inch solar spar telescope recently was on display at the public opening (August 20, 2011) of the new Walking Mountains Science Center in Avon, Colorado.
It was designed and built by George Carroll at the Thomas Tool and Die Company, the company owned by Dave Thomas, Sr., another of Stony Ridge Observatory's Founding members. The telescope is equipped with interchangeable field lenses, including one with interchangeable solar occulting disks. This particular instrument was built in 1974 for the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College (Massachusetts) and dedicated to the memory of Charles J. Hardy, Jr., Chairman of ACF Industries and a member of the Williams College class of 1917.
Presently being restored by John W. Briggs, this telescope will travel to the Mt. Wilson Observatory for observations of the transit of Venus in June, 2012.
Photo courtesy of John W. Briggs
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