Bernhard Woldemar Schmidt - History of Astronomy

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 Today is the anniversary of the death, in Hamburg on 1 Dec 1935, of the German optician Bernhard Woldemar Schmidt.

He is famous for inventing, in 1930, the telescope type that now bears his name and which allows astronomers to obtain sharp wide-field images of the sky with a single exposure. .




The most famous example of the Schmidt telescope design is the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory (pictured), which was completed in 1948. Taking its first official image in September of that year, data from this instrument contributed towards the initial guide star catalogue for the Hubble Space Telescope





The 11 km diameter lunar crater Schmidt, located near the south western shore of Mare Tranquillitatis and seen here at lower left of image with the nearby craters Ritter (upper left of centre) and Sabine (right of centre), is named in his honour and in honour of the German astronomer and geophysicist Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt and the Soviet scientist, mathematician, astronomer and geophysicist Otto Yulyevich Schmidt.




Credit:societyforthehistoryofastronomy.com








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