Maksutov Telescope History

Maksutov telescope history begins with its inventor, the Russian optician Dmitri Maksutov, who was born in 1896 and died in 1964. This reflecting telescope is a Cassegrain type using a primary mirror spherical in shape with a corrector plate shaped like a meniscus at the pupil's entrance. This corrector plate corrects spherical aberrations.

The history of the Maksutov telescope begins when Dmitri Maksutov was very young. Born in the Russian city of Odessa, his family was made up of seafaring folks. He, however, became interested in astronomy instead and began the history of the Maksutov telescope with his construction, at the early age of 12 years, of a 7.2 inch 180 mm reflector telescope.

He later pored over books written by his mentor and soon to be teach, the noted Russian optician A.A. Chikin. Under Chikin's tutelage he got that much closer to making Maksutov telescope history by creating a 20-inch reflector telescope and seriously studying the stars.

When he was a mere 15 years old Dmitri was already accepted for membership in the prestigious Russian Astronomical Society. Upon his graduation, three years after that, from the Petersburg based military engineering school, he spent the next nine years absorbed in astronomy work at the University of Odessa's Physics Institute. Here he studied astronomy optics.

From 1930 until 1952 this Maksutov telescope designer, made history at the Laboratory of Astronomical Optics, part of a Leningrad-based state optical organization. Here Maksutov worked in one of the foremost astronomical research laboratories in the USSR.

Thus the Maksutov telescope history.