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Equatorial Mounting

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.03 sec.
equatorial mounting: see telescope telescope, traditionally, a system of lenses, mirrors, or both, used to gather light from a distant object and form an image of it. Traditional optical telescopes, which are the subject of this article, also are used to magnify objects on earth and in astronomy;
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equatorial mounting [‚e·kwə′tȯr·ē·əl ′mau̇nt·iŋ]
(engineering)
The mounting of an equatorial telescope; it has two perpendicular axes, the polar axis (parallel to the earth's axis) that turns on fixed bearings, and the declination axis, supported by the polar axis.

Equatorial Mounting 

a telescope mounting that has two axes of rotation. One axis is directed toward the celestial pole and forms with the plane of the horizon an angle equal to the geographic latitude of the point of observation. The second axis is perpendicular to the first and lies in the plane of the celestial equator. The axes permit the telescope to be turned and directed at a point of the sky with specified coordinates (hour angle and declination). To compensate for the diurnal motion of the stars, the telescope is turned by a clock mechanism around the polar axis at a rate of one revolution per sidereal day.



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Usually optical telescopes have been hung in what is called an equatorial mounting, with one rotation axis parallel to the plane of the celestial equator and the other parallel to theline between the celestial north and south poles.
However, the telescope has to be hung at an angle to the vertical, and in the case of an arrangement as bulky as the NNTT, an equatorial mounting would impose torques and shears that the system couldn't sustain.
 
 
 
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