Antarctic Telescope?

angkor pastes "'A novel Antarctic telescope with 16-m diameter mirrors would far outperform the Hubble Space Telescope, and could be built at a tiny fraction of its cost, says a scientist from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney, Australia.'"

Comments

But...

[kdougherty]

Would this telescope be as beneficial as the Hubble considering the Hubble isn't attached to any surface and can freely move in space... This Antartic version would have limited viewing capabilities, so which would you rather have?

How old is the hubble ?

[ThomasFlip]

The new telescope would be utilizing the technology of today as opposed to over 10 years ago. Now I think its safe to say that deep space observational technology doesn't grow at the pace of say microchips, but I don't think its much of a suprise that new terrestrial based technology can outperform hubble. I think the real question we should be asking is: antarctic telescope vs NEW orbital telescope. Also, why haven't scientists thought of going to the poles earlier ?

Some limitations:

[Blackeagle_Falcon]

Not only are you limited to the southern sky, but you can't use it for months at a time (during the S. hemisphere summer). Compare that to Hubble which gets a look at the entire sky as it orbits the earth, and can operate 24/7.

Re:Some limitations:

[Michael Ashley]

When the sun is up (summertime) you can observe in the infrared and submillimeter. Hubble's observing efficiency is about 50% due to the requirement to avoid the Earth, the South Atlantic Anomaly, slew time, etc.

The limitation is sky coverage is not important for many astronomical programs. Important regions such as the Galactic Center, the Magellanic Clouds, and the South Galactic Pole, are all visible.

Been done before...

[YorgleLlama]

I was working on the software side of the Spirex-Abu telescope at CARA... which no longer exists, as far as I know. (Spirex: South Pole InfraRed EXplorer, Abu was just the name of the IR CCD device.) http://pipe.cis.rit.edu

It was meant for doing Infrared astronomy, using an experimental IR sensor. (some pics on that link)

The thought was that due to the fact that it's so dry an cold down there, you could do IR astronomy similarly to an IR telescope in space. Results were pretty good too.

All observations were done over the Antarctic Winter, while the airport was colosed, since the sky was colder and there was less water vapor in the sky... and as you know, the less water vapor, the better the IR imaging capability, and the colder, the less background noise.

This function will be taken up by the new SOFIA platform, which we're also working on as well right now. I believe there have been /. articles about it, but in case you forgot, it's a 2.5m telescope in the back of a modified 747... also meant for IR astronomy.(at 40,000 feet up, you're above most of the water vapor in the air) SOFIA can be reconfigured after each landing.

Re:Rather quite expensive in the long term

[table_62]

Maybe this is why we've been clearing out all that pesky ozone down there: the view is so much better now.

Pros and cons

[Michael Woodhams]

I'm an ex-astronomer, so I'll comment on this.

The optical arangement is unlike any I've seen before or heard of. I don't have the expertise or the information to comment on whether it will really work. I'll just comment that making optically flat mirrors was very hard (much harder than the normal curved mirrors) last time I heard, but there might be new technology to help here.

There are basically three competing locations: space, Antarctica, somewhere else on Earth. There is an order of magnitude or more in accessibility and cost between each option.

Space:
Pro:
Access to the full range of wavelengths - no atmospheric absorption or emission. (Particularly useful in UV and IR.)
No atmospheric bluring - diffraction limited resolution at all wavelengths
Can observe almost any part of the sky at any time.
Con:
Hugely expensive
Very inaccessible - service missions are either impossible or cost hundreds of millions or more
Size limitations on launch - either the telescope is smallish (Hubble) or needs even more expense to 'unfold' in orbit (new generation space telescope).
Very hostile environment: cold on one side, hot on another, radiation belts, ...

Antarctica:
Pro:
Access to wavelengths difficult or impossible to access elsewhere on Earth (mostly mid to far IR. The ozone hole presumably helps out in UV also.)
Best seeing on the planet: very little atmospheric blur much of the time.
Con:
Can only ever view half the sky
Unusable during summer
Very expensive
Poor accesibility: Only during summer, only at great expense.
Hostile environment: extreme cold. Possible build up of ice by sublimation deposition.

Anywhere else:
Pro:
Cheapest
Daily access, can drive a truck up to the telescope
Can have astronomers on site, e.g. debugging new detectors
Can see the northern hemisphere
Con:
Poor seeing
Many interesting wavelengths inaccessible or hard to observe
Unusable during the day

We need all three - space for what we can't do on Earth, Antarctica for what we can't do elsewhere (except space, which costs more). Whether the telescope described (very briefly...) in the article is sensible I couldn't say, nor could I say whether it makes sense to use Dome C rather than the more accessible, and manned, south pole base.