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100 Meter OWL Telescope Project

Posted by michael on from the they-do-it-with-mirrors dept.

mindpixel writes: "The European South Observatory (my employer) is getting VERY serious about building the OWL (OverWhelmingly Large) 100 meter telescope. Check out this new site dedicated to the project. You can see some cool diagrams of what the OWL telescope will look like and some simulated images here." For more about telescopes of unusual size, you might read McKinstry's interview last year.

3 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Err... by bdeclerc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For the price of one small space telescope (HST mirror is only 2.4m in diameter) you can build the largest earth-based telescopes ten times over (the ESO VLT, 4 8m telescopes working as an array will, when fully operational in 2003-2004 have cost maybe 1/5 of what Hubble has cost until now). Furthermore, in visible light, earth-based telescopes are already producing images as sharp as, and even sharper than Hubble. At the time the HST was conceived, Adaptive Optics, which can eliminate most atmospheric turbulence, was still a US Military classified technology). The only short-term reasons for building space telescopes are: 1) observing in wavelengths absorbed by our atmosphere (like much of the IR and UV spectrum) 2) Getting spectra of earth-like planets surrounding other stars, this would require a space-based interferometer, because the earth probably isn't a sufficiently stable base to do this type of observations...

  2. Future Surveys will be electronic by StupendousMan · · Score: 4, Informative
    Well, ok, camera resolution might not be so important in most research, but I would imagine that doing the Palomar sky survey (hundreds of huge plates) with CCDs would be impossible (it would probably require trillions of pictures).

    The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is using CCDs to map one quarter of the entire sky, in five passbands. Its main camera uses a mosaic of 30 2048x2048 CCDs to cover an area about 2.5 degrees across (although there are gaps between the chips). Other mosaic cameras have even more pixels.

    Future ground-based surveys will use electronic detectors, not photographic plates. The increased sensitivity and linearity of electronic detectors, plus their inherent digital output, make them far superior to plates.

    --
    Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
    mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
  3. Re:Why more ground based telescopes? by Linguica · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This very question was answered in the interview linked at the end of the article.

    What are the benefits of having an Earth-bound, optical telescope? Or rather, what can a larger optical telescope find better from Earth that we can't already find on other wavelengths and from other venues (i.e. The Hubble)?

    If there are no advantages here, is it more cost-effective, or what?

    Chris: What you should actually ask is what advantage does a space based telescope have over a ground based telescope? The only thing you gain from being in space for an optical telescope is better image quality due to lack of atmospheric turbulence. By for every other measure (maintenance, support, materials, etc.) being in space is much, much more expensive and limited. Which is why the Hubble and it's 2.4 meter primary cost a number of times more than the projected cost of of the 100 meter OWL. Recent advances in computer technology (adaptive and active optics) have greatly reduced the advantage that being in space provides at optical wavelengths. For some non-optical telescopes (x-ray, IR, gamma ray) there will always be an advantage to being in orbit.