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Ground-based Telescope as Sharp as Hubble

Posted by michael on from the corrective-lenses-required dept.

Midnight Thunder writes: "The BBC has an article describing how the Paranal Observatory has been able to take images that are just as sharp as the Hubble Space Telescope. For a ground based telescope the images are of amazing quality."

3 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Huge News by Fraser+Cain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is enormous news when you consider the bottleneck of time the Hubble Space Telescope has become. If it works well, you can expect this technology to be applied to many ground-based observatories.

    Then multiply it with the technology that merges the images from several mirrors to act like one giant mirror.

    Finally, when you match this technology with the new technique devised to detect the atmospheres of distant planets, it really offers a lot to planet hunters.

    I think this will revolutionize planet hunting, and bring the detection of Earth-sized planets with oxygen atmospheres within the near future.

    Fraser Cain

    --
    Publisher, Universe Today - http://www.universetoday.com
  2. CCD's and Image processing have come along way! by pease1 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Image processing and cheap CCD detectors have REEEEALLLLYYY improved astro-imaging from the ground. In fact, it's restarted a dead line of astronomy: studing images instead of spectra and other forms of data.

    Amateurs are doing amazing stuff. Here's an image of Saturn taken with an amateur 13-inch scope and a camcorder. It's compared side-to-side with a similar HST image. You will be surprised.

    Dozens of amateurs joined in a program to supply images to the 2001 International Marswatch program during this past Martian observing season. The pros use these images to decide when to spend their valuable HST time to look at Mars. Some of the images (and visual drawings) are incredible.

  3. Not so sure... by QuantumFTL · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IANAA, but I have a few comments neverthe less :)

    First of all, visible light just isn't the best spectrum to do astronomy in for a lot of things, especially not the detection of extrasolar planets. Infrared radiation, unhindered by most space dust, and lower in energy, is clearly superior for studying things that are not giant balls of gas. The Next Generation Space Telescope and the Terrestrial Planet Finder both use infrared radiation to study objects of great interest that are difficult to study with something like the HST.

    Interferometry, the technology you refer to that allows telescopes to combine their phase information to generate an image with angular resolution of that of a single larger telescope (through something known as apature synthesis) is only one of the many uses of intereferometry. Perhaps much more exciting than that is the ability of the Terrestrial Planet Finder to use nulling interferometry to selectively block out the radiation from a star, without blocking out the much fainter (millions of times less) glow of a circling planet.

    Unfortunately the earth's atmosphere is mostly opaque to infra-red light, and room temperature objects (like most of the surface of the earth, and the telescopes on it) generate so much infra-red radiation that it makes it nearly impossible to do any far-infrared studies from the ground. The Darwin Project web site has a good explaination about the reasons terrestrial planet hunting should be done in space.

    Ground based observatories will always have a place, however eventually it will be a matter of cost and convenience rather than any technical superiority.

    Not saying this isn't cool, but it's mostly postponing the inevitable day when very little new astronomy can be done inside the confines of an atmosphere....