Schmidt telescope

American  

noun

1. a wide-angle reflecting telescope used primarily for astronomical photography, in which spherical aberration and coma are reduced to a minimum by means of a spherical mirror with a corrector plate near its focus.

---

Schmidt telescope British  

noun

1. a catadioptric telescope designed to produce a very sharp image of a large area of sky in one photographic exposure. It incorporates a thin specially shaped glass plate at the centre of curvature of a short-focus spherical primary mirror so that the resulting image, which is focused on a photographic plate, is free from spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism

---

Etymology

Origin of Schmidt telescope

1935–40; named after Bernard Schmidt (1879–1935), German inventor

Example Sentences

An amateur astronomer since he was a teenager, Voigt realized the scallop’s eye design resembled a kind of telescope invented nearly 100 years ago called the Schmidt telescope.

From Science Magazine • Apr. 13, 2023

Initially, it was inspected from two ground observatories in Australia, first the UK Schmidt telescope and later the Anglo-Australian telescope.

From New York Times • Aug. 4, 2022

Fritz Zwicky at the Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory, California, in the 1930s.Credit:

From Nature • Sep. 2, 2019

With the 48-inch Schmidt telescope on Palomar Mountain he found hundreds of luminous "bridges" connecting widely separated galaxies.

From Time Magazine Archive

Schmidt telescope of the California Institute of Technology on Palomar Mountain, future site of the 200-in. telescope now under construction.

From Time Magazine Archive