HOBBY-EBERLY
Location: Texas Type: Optical
Diameter: Ten metres
10 Before its success as one of the world’s largest optical telescopes, Hobby-Eberly’s design was unique. One element that helped make it stand out from existing telescopes is that its mirror is always tilted 55 degrees up from the horizon. This might sound restricting, but its rotating mechanism means it can still observe 70 per cent of the visible sky. The telescope’s mirror has 91 hexagonal segments to collect visible light.
The most noteworthy discovery by Hobby-Eberly was observing light that originated from a quasar so far away that Earth was only an eighth of its current age when this light began travelling
