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Global Internet Telescope Tops Hubble's Resolution

Posted by timothy on from the peer-to-peer-peering dept.

satorchi writes " The Arecibo Observatory together with the European VLBI Network have used the internet to make a real-time transatlantic synthesis telescope. Data from the individual telescopes was transfered via the internet, and processed in real time by the central processing station at the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe. 9 terabits were transfered during the 20 hour experiment, and the resulting synthesised telescope had a resolution of 20 milliarcseconds, about 5 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This level of detail is equivalent to picking out a small building on the surface of the Moon!"

4 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Does this mean by ahillen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't know, but if you see something, the sceptics will claim the picture is fake.

  2. Re:Does this mean by prodangle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sadly I doubt it. If they weren't convinced by the reflectors, nothing will convince them http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo11/A11_Exper iments_LRRR.html http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog? sc=1969-059C&ex=4

  3. true geekery by blooba · · Score: 3, Insightful

    we computer guys think we're geeky, but these stargazers make us look like a bunch of high school jocks.

  4. Re:Ground telescopes surpassed Hubble years ago by Doctor+Fishboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would say that, for the type of science that HST does (at the wavelengths that it does it), there is nothing on the ground that can match its resolving power.

    *winces* sorry to be anal about it, but if you added "for visible wavelengths" to that then it would be on the money.

    HST has an IR camera, and with that the AO ground observations on large telescopes beat HST in spatial resolution, period. The diffraction limit for HST at 1.65 microns is 200 mas, whereas for a 6.5m telescope, it is 64 mas. The PSF of HST is cleaner (i.e. follows a sinc pattern well) and stable than that of a ground based AO equipped telescope, but you can split binaries in the NIR on the ground that HST could not resolve. Because of the power law of the atmospheric turbulence, visible light AO is not being tackled, and so far there is no big push to work on it, as there is a lot to be done at near IR wavelengths where AO works a couple of orders better.

    Thanks for your patience with my nitpicking - I do agree with your general view! AO in near IR is extremely competitive, but for visible and UV imaging, HST cannot be beat.

    Dr Fish