UK Schmidt Telescope, Optical telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, Australia.
The UK Schmidt Telescope is an optical instrument at Siding Spring Observatory equipped with a 1.2-meter mirror system designed to photograph large areas of the southern sky. The camera uses a specialized optical design that produces wide-field images on photographic plates.
This instrument began operations in 1973 under British management and transferred to the Anglo-Australian Observatory in 1988. The transition reflected growing Australian involvement in southern hemisphere astronomy research.
The telescope's name stayed "UK Schmidt" even after Britain withdrew from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in 2010 and Australia took over full operation. Its plates fed the Guide Star Catalog used for the Hubble Space Telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey, so the instrument's output became a shared reference for observatories worldwide.
The telescope stands beside the 3.9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, near Coonabarabran in New South Wales. It is a working research instrument rather than a public attraction, so viewing is normally from outside the dome. The site is remote, reached by road from Coonabarabran, and nights are cold.
The UKST's photographic plates were digitised by the Space Telescope Science Institute to build the Guide Star Catalog used by the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Digitized Sky Survey. The 6dF instrument later positioned up to 150 optical fibres by robot on a metal plate at the focal plane, feeding a spectrograph on the dome floor.
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