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Gas Clouds As Giant Telescopes

Posted by timothy on from the repurposing dept.

allrong writes "Astronomers have found a way to harness clouds of gas in space to make a natural 'telescope' more powerful than any manmade telescope currently in operation. Read the press release or take a look at the images and description of the process."

3 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Ok, but... by slimsam1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will we be able to focus on something of our choosing, not just something that happens to be on the other side of a gas cloud?

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  2. Don't call it a telescope. by The+Terrorists · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Extracting data from these requires as many monitoring facilities and personnel as a real telescope. If you call this a telescope budget cutters will claim we don't need to build new hardware out of the federal budget.

  3. THIS IS NOT A NEW TECHNIQUE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been using a technique similar to this in my own research for years, except on a microscopic scale... I know, I know, microscopy sounds like a completely different field from astonomy, but they share surprising similarities. In both sciences, we use powerful instruments to see what we can't see with the naked eye. A telescope is a powerful magnifier whose focal point is at infinity, since for all intents and purposes the stars are infinitely far away. A microscope is like a telescope except its focal point is a few millmeters to a few hundred microns. Therefore, both instruments can take advantage of the same optical techniques.

    In microscopy, the limiting resolution is the scattering of light due to small air or water currents (depending on what your speciman is submersed in)--the effects are similar to twinkling stars caused by Earth's atmosphere. Sometimes you can evacuate the sample chamber and remove the effect, but this isn't practical for biological or aqeous specimans.

    Therefore, a technique called "reverse diffraction engineering" is used to remove the scattering effects. Powerful software is needed to analyze the subtle image changes over time. The software then digitally removes the scattered light and creates an image with a much higher resolution.

    A similar technique is being used to effectively remove the atmosphere above earth based telescopes, creating a "vacuum column" above them. I don't have a link, but this technique was demonstrated last year at a European observatory. A full blown telescope is in the works. This technique could render the Hubbel telescope, and the need to put telescopes in space, obsolete.