United Kingdom Infrared Telescope

United Kingdom Infrared Telescope

UKIRT, the United Kingdom Infra-Red Telescope, is a 3.8 metre (150 inch) infrared reflecting telescope, the second largest dedicated infrared (1 to 30 micrometres) telescope in the world. It is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hilo and located on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i as part of Mauna Kea Observatory. It is owned by the United Kingdom Science and Technology Facilities Council, which announced it was gong to shut it down or transfer operations at the end of 2013. Scientists described the shutdown as "very sad" and noted its cutting edge science.

Read more about United Kingdom Infrared Telescope:  History, Instrumentation, Upgrades, Shutdown, Contemporaries On Commissioning

Famous quotes containing the words united, kingdom and/or telescope:

    The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
    My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
    ...
    And my large kingdom for a little grave,
    A little, little grave, an obscure grave.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)