Hale Telescope

Hale Telescope is a 5.1 m (200 inch) reflector telescope at Palomar Observatory. It began operation in 1949 and was the largest reflecting telescope until 1976's BTA-6, and was only truly outclassed by the Keck Observatory in the 1990s. It is named for George Ellery Hale who orchestrated its construction.

The telescope has an equatorial mount, using a Serrurier truss, a design that maintains optical alignment despite gravity. The mirror is a glass (Pyrex) monolithic mirror shaped from a "blank" made by Corning Glass Works. Depending upon the particular instrument's mounting, the telescope functions as a Cassegrain reflector, a prime focus reflector, or a coudé focus reflector. Among the telescope's current instruments:

• PALM-3000 aka P3K - adaptive optics.
• PHARO - Palomar High Angular Resolution Observer.
• WIRC - Wide-field Infrared Camera.
• WaSP - Wafer-scale imager for prime.
• CWI - Cosmic Web Imager (imaging spectrograph).
• DBSP - Double Spectrograph.
• TripleSpec.
• CHIMERA - Caltech High-speed Multi-color Camera.
• PARVI - Palomar Radial Velocity Instrument.

In development:

• NGPS - Next Generation Palomar Spectrograph (aims to replace DBSP).
• SIGHT - Sharpening Images Using Guidestar at Hale Telescope (AO system).

Some instruments listed in the past:

• SDC - Stellar double coronagraph.
• LFC - Large Format Camera.
• Project 1640 aka P1640 - coronagraph.
• COSMIC - Carnegie Observatories Spectroscopic Multislit and Imaging Camera.
• Oxford SWIFT - integral field spectrograph.
• Four-shooter aka 4-shooter - wide-field spectrograph/camera.
• PFUEI - Prime Focus Universal Extragalactic Instrument (spectrograph/camera).