{"id":205347,"date":"2010-01-20T17:41:01","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T22:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"1725 at http:\/\/atlasobscura.com"},"modified":"2010-01-20T17:41:01","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T22:41:01","slug":"mcmath-pierce-solar-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/205347","title":{"rendered":"McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/north-america\/us\/arizona\/pima-county\">Pima County<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/north-america\/us\/arizona\">Arizona<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/categories\/architectural-oddities\/subterranean-sites\">Subterranean Sites<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, atop Kitt Peak in Arizona, is the world&#8217;s largest instrument dedicated to studying the Sun. Designed by Bruce Graham of the prolific Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill architectural firm, the telescope commands an awe-inspiring view with its distinctive 110-foot-tall tower and 200-foot-long diagonal shaft. <\/p>\n<p>Completed in 1962, the building&#8217;s main instrument is a heliostat, which tracks the Sun through the sky and focuses its light down through the diagonal shaft.  This shaft continues about 50 vertical meters underground to a 1.6-meter primary mirror, forming the largest unobstructed-aperture of any optical telescope system. From here, the light travels back up a portion of the shaft to a flat mirror, which then reflects an 85-centimeter wide image of the Sun downward to a subterranean laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to being the largest solar telescope in the world, the McMath-Pierce is also unique because it is sensitive enough to observe bright stars at night.  The telescope also boasts a low-cost (which translates from astronomical terms to less than $25,000) adaptive optics system.  This setup utilizes a rapidly deformable mirror to correct for distortions introduced by the turbulent atmosphere. Using sensors to measure the degree of image distortion, the adaptive optics system adjusts the mirror&#8217;s shape accordingly and thus turns a blurry image into a clear one.<\/p>\n<p>One major area of study at the observatory is the structure of sunspots, which are relatively cold, dark spots on the Sun&#8217;s surface created by intense magnetic activity.  Some of the more important discoveries made at McMath-Pierce, however, include the detection of water vapor in the Sun, the measurement of kilogauss magnetic fields (thousands of times stronger than the Earth&#8217;s) outside of sunspots, and the detection of a natural maser (like a laser, but with microwaves instead of visible light) in the Martian atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.atlasobscura.com\/files\/imagecache\/place_main\/place_images\/1_5.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"  width=\"280\" height=\"184\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pima County, Arizona | Subterranean Sites The McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, atop Kitt Peak in Arizona, is the world&#8217;s largest instrument dedicated to studying the Sun. Designed by Bruce Graham of the prolific Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill architectural firm, the telescope commands an awe-inspiring view with its distinctive 110-foot-tall tower and 200-foot-long diagonal shaft. Completed in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}