The Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope was originally named the Vacuum Tower Telescope and later renamed to honor a retiring astronomer who pushed for its construction and played a major role in designing the telescope’s vacuum tube light path.
The Dunn’s white tower sticks up out of Sacramento Peak like an iceberg. While the tower rises 13 stories above ground level, two-thirds of the telescope (about 220 feet) remains hidden underground.
The telescope tube, optical laboratory, and instruments are connected as a single, freely rotating platform, weighing more than 250 tons and floating on 120 gallons of liquid mercury.
The Telescope employs a vacuum for obtaining a clear view of the sun. It consists basically of three mirrors, two windows and an evacuated optical path. Sunlight enters the tower through a 76-centimeter (30-inch) window located 41 meters (136 feet) above the ground. At 55 meters (180 feet) below the observing room floor, the sunlight is reflected from the concave 1.6 meter (64-inch) main mirror of the telescope back up to the observing room, producing a 51-centimeter (20-inch) diameter image of the sun for detailed studies.
The Dunn is designed to observe extremely small features in the sun's surface, or photosphere, and in the lower atmosphere, or chromosphere. The telescope's unique open optical bench system gives astronomers the ability to use a variety of instruments. Research astronomers from many institutions and organizations go the Dunn Solar Telescope to install and test instruments and perform data collection.
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CUTLINE: A diagram of the solar telescope which was renamed to honor Richard B. Dunn, a retiring astronomer who pushed for its construction and played a major role in designing the telescope’s vacuum tube light path. (NMSU photo by Chloe Dunlap)