Schmidt camera Schmidt camera A Schmidt camera, also referred to as the Schmidt telescope, is a catadioptric astrophotographic telescope designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. The design was invented by Bernhard Schmidt in 1930. Some notable examples are the Samuel Oschin telescope (formerly Palomar Schmidt), the UK Schmidt Telescope and the ESO Schmidt; these provided the major source of all-sky photographic imaging from 1950 until 2000, when electronic detectors took over. A recent example is the Kepler spacecraft exoplanet finder. Other related designs are the Wright Camera and Lurie–Houghton telescope. The Schmidt camera was invented by German-Estonian optician
Maarten Schmidt Maarten Schmidt Maarten Schmidt (born December 28, 1929) is a Dutch astronomer who measured the distances of quasars. Born in Groningen, The Netherlands, Schmidt studied with Jan Hendrik Oort. He earned his Ph.D. degree from Leiden Observatory in 1956. He was a co-recipient, with Donald Lynden-Bell, of the inaugural Kavli Prize for Astrophysics in 2008. In 1959, he emigrated to the United States and went to work at the California Institute of Technology. In the beginning, he worked on theories about the mass distribution and dynamics of galaxies. Of particular note from this period was his formulation of what has