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T4 Swedish Solar Telescope

The Swedish Solar Telescope was the first telescope built on the Roque. The main design problem for solar telescopes is air turbulence caused by heat. They solved this by making most of the tower a vacuum tube. Of course that means that the 1 metre lens at the top of the tower has to be very strong to cope with the pressure difference, as well as optically perfect. The thingamybob on the top of the tower is called a heliostat: it follows the sun across the sky and sends the image down the tower to the instruments in the basement.

It had new optics fitted in 2002, and adaptive optics added in 2005. Since then it's produced the best solar images of any earth-based telescope. It can resolve details of the sun's surface only 70km across.

Digital photo: Pentax K10D

El telescopio solar sueco fue el primer telescopio contruido en el Roque. El problema principal de ingeniria para cualquier telescopio solar es la turbulencia del aire, causado por el calor. En esto telescopio, la solucion fue una camera de vacio que ocupa la mayoria del torre. Claro, esta quiere decir que la lente de 1 metro tiene que aguantar una gran differencia del presio, ademas que de muy buena calidad optico. El chisme encima de la torre se llama un heliostat: sigue el sol mientras cruze el cielo, y manda el imagin a los instrumentos en el sótano.

Foto digital: Pentax K10D

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