Support mount
The support mount is a special type of equatorial mount . It was invented and registered for a patent in 1961 by the designer Alfred Jensch . The Carl Zeiss company in Jena has equipped several 2 m telescopes with such a mount .
The hour axis ends at the top in a spherical zone that, floating on a thin layer of oil, bears the entire weight of the telescope . The hour axis only has to absorb the very small torques of the drive. The weight forces, on the other hand, can be transferred to the foundation in the shortest possible way. The declination axis is bent in such a way that the center of gravity of the entire movable mass comes to lie in the center of the spherical zone.
The advantages of support mounting are:
- the telescope is not restricted in its movement possibilities in any direction by parts of the mount
- sensible separation of power flow and positioning
- The light coming from the secondary mirror is diverted into the hour axis via only two mirrors in order to reach a spectrograph located in the basement of the observatory ( four mirrors are required with a fork mount )
literature
- Helmut Artus, Alfred Karnapp, Hans-Jürgen Kiel, Manfred Steinbach, Karl-Heinz Weßlau: Alfred Jensch - memories of him and his work . In: Jena yearbook on technology and industrial history 2002 . Glaux Verlag, Jena, ISBN 3-931743-56-X , pp. 38-39
- Rolf Riekher: Telescopes and their masters . 2nd Edition. Verlag Technik, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-341-00791-1 , pp. 356-357.