Getting Ready To Map The (Visible) Universe

phanki writes "The Arecibo Observatory is gearing up to map the universe soon. This article talks about the university getting a set of new radio recievers to complete the background work for the mapping process. So very soon we may have the map for the Andromeda !"

Comments

Useless to real men

[Mr.Sharpy]

While this map may very well aid the fairer sex navigate the stars someday, we real men will do as we have for thousands of years...wander aimlessly claiming that we are not lost.

Looking for good radio, huh?

[jpsst34]

"The 1,000-foot-wide parabolic receiver - composed of 38,000 aluminum tiles - allows researchers to listen to sounds in space..."

Geez. The lengths some guys will go to just to be able to listen to radio that isn't controlled by ClearChannel!

Misleading article, etc.

[barakn]

Getting Ready To Map The (Visible) Universe is a bad title, as the word 'visible' in astronomy means light with wavelengths between ~380 nm and 780 nm, while Arecibo looks at stuff from 3 cm to 6 m.. Also, the AP news article repeatedly equates the radio telescope with a listening device, though it can map the sky at resolutions better than most telescopes.

Final Fontier

[Strange Ranger]

An interesting aspect of space exploration is that it's the only frontier we've ever attempted to explore with decent maps already in hand.

In the past, from Moses to Marco Polo to Columbus, maps were impossible. They tried to draw them as they went along.

We'll probably never again be at a point where we say "What in the heck is out there?" We'll never again have Uncharted Territory. But rather we say "What in the heck will that look like up close." In a way it's kind of sad to lose that mystery. But in a way it's pretty cool to explore Charted Territory that has never been explored before.

A silly example of the difference this makes is turning off the Fog Of War on your favorite video game... Profoundly changes the whole nature of the game. No more thinking you landed on the coast of India and getting the name of an entire race wrong. All the mysteries start and stop with the limitations of our "long range sensor sweeps". I don't know where I meant to go with this... I guess it's sad on one hand that "totally uncharted territory" is forever gone, but on the other hand the trade off in speed of discovery, safety, return on investment, etc, will be pretty incredible, and well worth it to all but the terminally romantic.

Re:Final Fontier

[Christopher Thomas]

We'll probably never again be at a point where we say "What in the heck is out there?" We'll never again have Uncharted Territory. But rather we say "What in the heck will that look like up close."

This is only partly true. Many space objects are the next best thing to invisible. Barring a really concerted (and expensive) effort, we won't have maps of, say, the Kupier belt that are anywhere close to complete. Even closer to home, we only have records for the _big_ asteroids in the belt (and inner solar system).

Similarly, while we've found at least one white dwarf star in our local neighbourhood, others may very well exist that we aren't noticing - they're quite dim. Smaller objects, like gas giants ejected from systems during formation and drifting in interstellare space, or the myriad of objects in the Oort cloud, may not ever be found - unless an object emits a lot of light or is both large and quite close to a bright light source (like a star), it's lost in the void.

Think of our medium-term mapping situation as the equivalent of having the tourist brochures for the area we want to visit, and our current maps as being the blurb on the back of them. Still plenty to discover.