Astronomical instruments

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 93. Chapters: Active surface, Albion (astronomy), Alidade, Almucantar, Antikythera mechanism, ARCADE, Archeops, ARGOS (optics system), Armillary sphere, Astrarium, Astrograph, Astrolabe, Astronomical interferometer, Astronomical rings, Autoguider, Backstaff, Bris sextant, Celatone, Center for Detectors, Cherenkov Telescope Array, CORALIE spectrograph, Cosmolabe, Cranmer Park, Dioptra, Dividing engine, Eidouranion, ELODIE spectrograph, Elton's quadrant, Equatorial ring, Equatorium, ESPRESSO, European Pulsar Timing Array, Fiber-optic Improved Next-generation Doppler Search for Exo-Earths, Filar micrometer, Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice, Groombridge Transit Circle, HARPS-N, Helioscope, Herschel wedge, High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, Integral field spectrograph, International Pulsar Timing Array, Mariner's astrolabe, Mini-RF, Mural instrument, MySky, Nocturnal (instrument), North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, Octant (instrument), Optical mount, Orrery, Quadrant (instrument), Qubic experiment, Radio telescope, Reflecting instrument, REM Telescope, Reticle, Rotational Modulation Collimator, Sextant (astronomical), Shadow square, Sine quadrant, SkyScout, Solar telescope, SOPHIE échelle spectrograph, Spectroheliograph, Spectrohelioscope, SPEX (astronomy), Spider (polarimeter), Stonyhurst disks, Telecompressor, Tellurion, The Celestial Sphere Woodrow Wilson Memorial, The Dish (landmark), Torquetum, Triquetrum (astronomy), Volvelle, Warkworth 2 dish, Warkworth Radio Observatory, Warkworth Radio Telescope. Excerpt: The Antikythera mechanism ( -i-ki--¿ or -i--¿-r¿) is an ancient analog computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900-1901 from the Antikythera wreck, but its significance and complexity were not understood until a century later. Jacques Cousteau visited the wreck in 1978 but, although he found new dating evidence, he did not find any additional remains of the Antikythera mechanism. The construction has been dated to the early 1st century BCE. Technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the 14th century AD, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University, who led a 2006 study of the mechanism, said: The Antikythera mechanism is kept at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. It is now displayed at the temporary exhibition about the Antikythera Shipwreck, accompanied by reconstructions made by Ioannis Theofanidis, Derek de Solla Price, Michael Wright, the Thessaloniki University and Dionysios Kriaris. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana, the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York, in Kassel, Germany, and at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The mechanism was housed in a wooden box approximately 340 × 180 × 90 mm in size and comprised 30 bronze gears (although more could have been lost). The largest gear, clearly visible in fragment A, was approximately 140 mm in diameter and most likely had 223 teeth. The mechanism's remains were found as 82 separate fragments of which only seven contain any gears or significant inscriptions. This machine has the oldest known complex gear mechanism and is sometimes called the first known analog computer, although the quality of its manufacture suggests that it may have had a number of undiscovered predecessors during the He...