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Image © National Museums Scotland
View full screenContemporary wooden model of the Earl of Rosse's reflecting telescope with a three foot diameter speculum, showing the method of mounting it, made at Birr Castle, Ireland, c. 1840
T.1911.160
Birr, County Offaly, Ireland, Northern Europe
c. 1840
Wood, lead, iron, brass
Constructor of original telescope: Parsons, William, 3rd Earl of Rosse, 1800 - 1867
Earth in Space (29 Jul 2011)
National Museum of Scotland
J.E. Burnett and A.D. Morrison-Low, Vulgar & Mechanick: the Scientific Instrument Trade in Ireland, 1650 - 1921 (Edinburgh and Dublin, 1989), pp 89-94
Lord Oxmantown, 'Account of a series of experiments on the construction of large reflecting telescopes', Edinburgh Journal of Science 2 (1830), pp 136-44
Patrick Moore, The Astronomy of Birr Castle (London, 1971)
C. Mollan, W. Davis, B. Finucane (eds.), Some People and Places in Irish Science and Technology (Dublin, 1985), pp 84-7
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