Fourth and Final 'Great Observatory' To Launch Soon

Uosdwis writes "The New York Times (FRYYY) has an article about SIRTF, the fourth and last 'Great Observatory'. It is a Space based Infra Red Telescope Facility which will extend the work of The Hubble telescope, The Compton Gamma Ray telescope and The Chandra X-Ray telescope. SIRTF is quite an amazing project using new ideas such as an Earth Trailing starting from an L1 orbit, and cooling only the intruments. Saved tax payers over $1 billion in redesigns. Check it out!"

Comments

There are four?

[sketerpot]

I really had no idea that there were four of these Great Observatories, since the only one I've ever heard about is the Hubble telescope. Perhaps radio telescopes and other things outside of the visible spectrum don't sound as exciting.

I like the idea of space telescopes---but I also like the idea of better earth based telescopes, since I think that they're going to be the most practical until we get a space elevator or something. We can make stars stop shimmering with adaptive optics, and we can get the resolving power of a telescope with a mirror a mile wide with interferometry, which would be impractical to build in space. Long vacuum-filled pipes between telescopes and mirrors aligning the light waves to be in phase are, to me, just as exciting as a single "great observatory"; moreso, perhaps, since the interferometric observatories can be constructed more cheaply (and so it will be easier for astronomers to get time on them).