Don Hendrix, master Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories optician
Abstract
Don O. Hendrix, with at most a high-school education and no previous experience in optics, became an outstanding astronomical optician at Mount Wilson Observatory. He started making Schmidt-camera optics for spectrographs there in 1932, and ultimately made them for all the stellar and nebular spectrographs used at the prime, Newtonian, Cassegrain, and coudé foci of the 60-inch, 100-inch, and Palomar Hale 200-inch telescopes. He completed figuring and polishing the primary 200-inch mirror, and also the Lick Observatory 120-inch primary mirror. Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatory designers Theodore Dunham Jr., Rudolph Minkowski, and Ira S. Bowen led the way for many years in developing fast, effective astronomical spectrographs, based on Hendrix's skills.
- Publication:
-
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
- Pub Date:
- June 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003JAHH....6....1O
- Keywords:
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- coudé spectrographs;
- large reflecting telescopes;
- Schmidt cameras;
- spectrographs