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The Humble Space Telescope
frank249 writes " How would you like to do your own astronomy research with a space-based telescope? Sounds unlikely? Perhaps today, since there's only one available, and NASA has it booked pretty solid. However, this is about to change. The Canadian Space Agency just signed a contract to launch Canada's first space telescope, is scheduled to be launched in October 2002. If successful, millions of astronomers worldwide will have access to a more humble version of NASA's Hubble via the internet. It is scheduled to be launched in October 2002 as part of a multiple payload mission from Plesetsk, Russia, on an SS-19 based launch vehicle called Rockot. The SS-19 was supposed to be destroyed as part of an Arms reduction treaty so why not get some use out of it?" And it's so cute, it looks like mod furniture.
Amazing... the same stuff that keeps us polite make satellites small! Wonders never cease...
You can get an hour for a bowl of poutine and a few strips of back-bacon.
Fair warning, of course, this is just a small part of the grand Canadian master plan to take over the world.
If anyone's interested there's a great article in last month's Wired that talks about how Russia is using their rockets to make some ca$h launching other people's satellites. Seems to be working pretty well too!
Have a Happy.
Guys, this isn't going to be rented by the hour to amateur astronomers (or amateur spy satellite operators). And this isn't going to be competing with Hubble either.
I think the story submitter spent too long as a moderator.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
As a former HST employee, I just wanted to let you know that the astronomical data from the Hubble Space Telescope is available online to anyone who wants access! Of course, astronomers have a certain time period before their data becomes available to give them a chance to analyze it first. It used to be a year, I believe. After that, it's available from http://archive.stsci.edu/hst/search_retrieve.html. That page should have all the info needed to start.
Happy stargazing!
Oh, and did I hear "scientific" space telescope? Well, space telescope, orbital missile defence platform, same thing, right?
The rest of the world will soon learn the virtues of putting cheese curds on french fries! BWAHAHAHA!
Only so long as we do not get the equivalent of the Holy Grail in Outer Space. Although that could be fun in itself.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
To save costs, this thing was designed and built by students at Canadian universities. At the University of Toronto, a graduate student taking AER 1520H would have directly participated in the design of MOST. I have some friends who worked on this project ...
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
...as opposed to the old Canadian attitude control technology, viz. the excellent products made by Molson, Labatts, etc.
:)
I never objected to the previous generation, but one must salute progress I suppose.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
IMO comparing this and the HST is misleading. They may be both telescopes, they may both be on satellites and they may both be in orbit (or, eventually be) but they are very different devices.
The diffraction limit of a telescope is proportional to the size of it's aperture - the size of the 'end' where the light goes in. Basically, the more light you can capture the more you can see: generally, very faint things are hard to see. The resolving power of a telescope is believed to be limited by the diffraction limit. (I may of course be wrong, I'm not a qualified astronomer - I've only just began.)
Ground based telescopes are considerably larger and, if there wasn't kilometres of air between it and the near-vacuum of space, would have much greater resolving power than the HST.
At the time the HST was launched, there was a need to 'see' without the atmosphere being in the way. It has been useful. Modern ground based telescopes using things like adaptive optics can see things which the HST can't - don't underestimate the resolving power of a telescope on the ground compared to the HST. The HST is still very useful, even AO doesn't correct 'perfectly', but then the HST optics are not perfect either: those spikes that come off the center of the stars aren't supposed to be there. They're called diffraction spikes and I'm lead to believe they're caused by the telescopes structure.
The MOST will be a useful tool, but it's a tool for a purpose and as a general telescope I'm not confident that it would compare well to the HST or ground based telescopes.
At the rate ground based telescopes are improving, don't expect the additional cost of producing general telescopes like the HST to be met often - but I'd expect more devices with specific purposes (for instance, X-Ray astronomy which is quite scary - I've been told that a handful (5) of photons is a good detection!)
Ian Woods
Slashdotters should get involved and use Open Source to help make it happen.
I take umbrage that you would say my comments are misleading. From Oxford dictionary: humble >adjective (humbler, humblest) 1 having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance. 2 of low rank. 3 of modest pretensions or dimensions.
The MOST as described in the project proposal - STELLAR SEISMOLOGY FROM SPACE is a 15 cm optical telescope with a broadband photometer. While the Hubble is larger (2.4m telescope) it has a number of instruments such as the Wide Field Planetary Camera with a role of trying to investigate the age of the universe.
So it is literally true that the MOST is a more humble version of the Hubble as they are both space telescopes trying to investigate the age of the universe.
As for your second comment, one of the MOST's team leaders was on a CBC radio science show and he said that in addition to the images available through the web site(like hubble), an unprecedented amount of time will be allocated to amateur observer projects through a public outreach programme. He also said that the project could last for over ten years. Now it is hard to say exactly how many astronomers(professional, amatuer, casual) will use data from MOST but it is safe to say that many will and the Canadian Space Agency will be getting good value from its $12 million(cdn) investment.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
The Press Release" was dated 20 Nov 2001 but MOST will not be launched until Oct 2002. My post was accepted in Nov but was delayed in posting due to a bug in the database which showed its date as 31 Dec 1968. I emailed Hemos and he fixed it Christmas eve.
The Canadian Space Agency describes MOST as a next generation microsatellite that will be the world's smallest astronomical space telescope, capable of measuring the ages of stars in our galaxy and perhaps even unlocking mysteries of the universe itself.. You are probally reffering to SCISAT1 on which will be the MAESTRO instrument (Measurements of Aerosol Extinction in the Stratosphere and Troposphere Retrieved by Occultation). SCISAT1 is due for launch in Dec 2002. There are other projects here.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.