Interferometer Spots Galaxy at 40M Lightyears

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."

Comments

Just wait for another 10 years

[Radical Rad]

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...