The first telescope on the Moon

摘要

Half a century ago, Dr George Carruthers (1939-) of the US Naval Research Lab started work on an instrument to perform far-Ultraviolet studies of stars, nebulae and galaxies. In November 1969, he patented his invention of an image converter for detecting electromagnetic radiation especially in short wavelengths. His pioneering work culminated in the far UV camera/spectrograph which was put on the Moon by the Apollo 16 astronauts in April 1972. Dr Carruthers is an African-American physicist and space scientist with a particular interest in ultraviolet (UV) astronomy and spectroscopy. In April 1966, the first of three Orbiting Astronomical Observatories was launched, carrying instruments to detect UV and gamma ray emission. However, a power failure ended the space telescope's mission prematurely. In 1969, he patented the far UV camera/spectrograph which could extend previous stellar research to fainter stars and shorter wavelengths. That same year the second Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO-2) carried several UV telescopes in low Earth orbit to study comets and novae but only a few observations extended to the Lyman-alpha line of hydrogen at 121.6 mm.