Van Vleck Observatory and the Role of the Large Refractor in Parallax Studies

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

The second half of the nineteenth century was the era par excellence of the `large refractor’ as the aperture of the world's largest refractor quickly rose to 40 inches, thanks in no small part to the critical role played by the firm of Alvan Clark & Sons. One of the research projects these long focal length telescopes were especially suited to was the determination of stellar parallaxes, and this research focus continued into the twentieth century. In 1922 a 20-inch f/16.5 Clark refractor was installed at the Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and this telescope was used to determine stellar parallaxes that were subsequently published by van Altena, Lee, and Hoffleit in The General Catalogue of Trigonometric Stellar Parallaxes, Fourth Edition (1995). After providing background information on refractor construction and parallax studies during the nineteenth century this paper focuses on the Van Vleck Observatory parallax program, which continued through into the 1990s, by which time HIPPARCHOS had been launched.

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