Telescope Builders, Alvan Clark & Sons Quiz

Answer: Ashfield, Massachusetts

He was the fifth of ten children, born on March 8, 1804 and he died on August 19, 1887. He didn't start building telescopes until he was forty. Before that he was an engraver and a painter of portraits. He was also a marksman with a rifle. Toward the end of his life he painted portraits of his two sons and his grandson. He had not painted a portrait in 25 years.

Answer: Percival Lowell

Percival Lowell purchased it for $20,000 in 1896. It was transported to Flagstaff by train. The observatory is known as the Lowell Observatory. It was here that the dwarf planet Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.

Answer: 40 inch

The 40 inch lens is at Yerkes observatory at Williams Bay, Wisconsin. It is owned by the University of Chicago. It is still in operation today. The Clarks also built the 36 inch lens that is at Lick Observatory, Mt Hamilton, San Jose, California. They also built the 26 inch at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the moons of Mars were discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877.

Answer: The companion star to Sirius

This was the first white dwarf star discovered. A white dwarf star is a star that has used up its supply of fuel. After expelling its outer shell, it becomes a planetary nebula. What's left is just the core of the star. This specific white dwarf star is actually a little smaller than the Earth, that's right, the Earth!

Answer: Yes

Crater Clark, on the far side of the Moon, lies in the southern hemisphere. It is named for both Alvan Clark and his son Alvan Graham Clark. The crater is 49 km in diameter. Alvan Clark also has a crater on Mars named after him.

Answer: All of these

The one from Amherst was in 1854, Princeton in 1865 and the University of Chicago in 1866, for his outstanding work on manufacturing telescopes. Alvan Clark also received a solid gold medal from Czar Alexander III of Russia in 1885 for the 30" telescope (third biggest telescope the Clark's ever made), that was installed at Pulkowa, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Although the Pulkowa Observatory was destroyed during WW2, the main lens had been safely stored. Unfortunately, it was never remounted.

Answer: Yes

Only once, in 1859, to visit with his close friend William Dawes. Dawes had bought five telescopes from Clark. This is the same William Dawes that determined the maximum resolving power of a telescope, which is known in the Astronomy world as the "Dawes Limit".

Answer: William Harvey Wells

He was principal of the Putnam Free School in Newburyport, Mass. The scope was set up there on October 4, 1848.

Answer: Supervised the installation of the 40" lens at Yerkes

He was planning a 60" refractor, but he died in June of 1897 before he started working on the larger lens. The Yerkes 40" lens had been delivered in 1893. Alvan Graham wasn't too worried about the problems with physically supporting such a huge (60") lens or the light absorption problems related with it.

Answer: 1958

The Clark establishment was taken over in 1933 by Sprague-Hathaway Manufacturing Co. of West Somerville, Massachusetts. They went out of business in 1958 taking the Clark Co. with them. Many of the Clark's telescopes survive to this day.