Well now, here's a story you don't hear every day: a telescope in Carefree, AZ may have caused a fire that burned part of a house. KNXV TV in Phoenix carried the story. I have comments below.
There's are also articles at AZCentral
and at Firegeezer
with some more details. My first reaction was, "No way." Then I looked into this more, and now I think the 'scope may have indeed been the culprit.
The telescope is a design called a Schmidt-Cassegrain
, or just SCT. I have one myself
! It's a tube with a big mirror (called the primary) in the back that's curved. It reflects light back up the tube. At the top of the tube is a flat piece of glass (called a corrector plate) with a smaller mirror embedded in the middle. This reflects the light again down toward the bottom of tube, where it ...
