Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Interferometer Spots Galaxy at 40M Lightyears

Posted by michael on from the i-spy dept.

techno-vampire writes "JPL announces that a pair of telescopes used as an optical interferometer have detected a galaxy 40 million light years away, smashing the previous record of 3,000 light years. This feat, using infrared, has given us a far more detailed look into the center of a galaxy, and opened up a whole new field of research."

4 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Hubble Deep Field Images? by orkysoft · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What about the Hubble Deep Field images that showed galaxies as much as 13 billion light years away?

    --

    I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
  2. Read article, interferometer != telescope by Caractacus+Potts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wish I could tell you the difference between the two, but I'm just now looking it up myself. Obviously, we've "detected" objects much, much, much further away. Even more importantly, we even have "Artist's Depictions" of those too!

    1. Re:Read article, interferometer != telescope by hubie · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Keep in mind that a telescope really is an interferometer. It forms an image by combining light from all parts of the primary mirror in phase at the detector. A (two-beam) interferometer combines light from two beams in phase at the detector. You can easily convert a telescope from it's "normal" mode over to an interferometer by putting a mask with two holes on it. This is how Michelson made the first stellar diameter measurements, and the Kecks, operating in interferometer mode, are just using the same technique Michelson did, just on a much much larger scale.

  3. Just wait for another 10 years by Radical+Rad · · Score: 5, Interesting
    When the MAXIM flys in about another decade, it will be able to resolve images (in Xray) up to a million times better than anything now available. It will allow imaging of blackholes, that is actual visualization of the Shwarzchild radius as well as observing other stars as well as we can our own sun today. To do this the telescopes must be in orbit since the high frequency radiation scatters too easily in the atmosphere. Even at the infrared wavelengths that the Keck used, adaptive optics were needed to make their observations from the ground.

    I would like to see an array of cheap telescopes stationed at the LaGrangian points to do interferometry at any wavelength. Gravity wave detection could also be included in the mix. There would be no need for elaborate vibration damping and not being limited to the simple L shape that current ground based gravity detectors use, we would be able to triangulate gravity wave disturbances in 3 dimensions!

    ...I sense a change in the force...