Bernhard Schmidt
Bernhard Schmidt (born 18 Märzjul / March 30 1879greg on the belonging to Estonia Naissaar ( German Nargen ). . † December 1, 1935 in Hamburg) was a specialist on astronomical optics optician. According to him, the Schmidt telescope is named, which is also known as a Schmidt camera or Schmidt telescope.
Life and work
As a teenager, Bernhard Schmidt lost while playing with gunpowder his right hand. Despite this handicap he shone not only theoretical knowledge, but also in the production of perfect lenses and mirrors.
Bernhard Schmidt worked in Mittweida. Besides the production of several large mirrors and lenses for astronomical instruments, he was also used to improve existing optics by retouching. He came to the observatory in Hamburg -Bergedorf in contact, he worked there since 1926 as a freelancer.
In Hamburg, he succeeded in inventing a completely new reflecting telescope, which is now called the Schmidt telescope, Schmidt telescope or Schmidt camera. The Schmidt camera was detectable because of the large angle of view and the highest image quality in the corners of the photo plates soon widespread in astrophotography. Made possible the success of the Schmidt telescope was also because Schmidt had abstained to announce his great idea as a patent.
Schmidt used for reflecting telescopes that bears his name is a combination of a spherical mirror and a thin front in the center plane attached refractive correction plate ( Schmidt plate ). This allows the disadvantages of large imaging parabolic mirror (small field of view, difficult manufacturing ) and avoid large refractors ( " sagging " of the big heavy lenses, secondary spectrum).
Developed to manufacture the extremely difficult to make correction plate and practiced Schmidt own production processes: a plane-parallel glass plate is specifically molded with vacuum. In this state, the plate is again ground and polished flat or spherical. After polishing, the disk is released. Meet a few tens of microns deviation of such a plate of plane parallelism in order to eliminate the spherical aberration and coma of a spherical mirror and thereby capitalize on its large field without aberrations. Since the deformation of the plate only indirectly received by their own weight in the picture quality, it was the first time now possible to create high-intensity telescopes with large numerical aperture and a large opening angle.
Honors
Bernhard Schmidt is the main character in the 1987 novel, Vastutuulelaev ( to about German ship against the wind ) of the Estonian writer Jaan Kross ( 1920-2007 ).
According to Schmidt, the asteroid is ( 1743) and Schmidt (along with two namesakes ) of the lunar crater named Schmidt. Also the Schmidtweg in Hamburg Bergedorf district is named after Bernhard Schmidt.
Works
- A strong light coma free mirror system. in Central newspaper of Optics and Mechanics 52 (1931 ) pp. 25-26 and in the statements of Hamburg Observatory in Bergedorf, Vol 7 No.36, Available online