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Telescope Will Have Images 10X Sharper Than Hubble
jangobongo writes "After a 20 year struggle, the University of Arizona's $120 million Large Binocular Telescope was dedicated last week. This unique telescope will have twin 8.4-meter (27.6 foot) mirrors that sit on a single mount. Using methods similar to a medical CAT scan, a technique of "tomographic" image reconstruction will be used to produce pictures 10 times sharper (example) than the Hubble Space Telescope for a fraction of its $2 billion dollar cost."
A space-based telescope (like the Hubble) can be rotated and aimed at almost any object out there. In that sense, a Hubble is still superior in some aspects.
On the other hand, just the fact that adaptive optics and interferometry can clean up the images so spectacularly is simply amazing!
I wonder how long before I can get a consumer-grade version, to take pictures of the coeds^H^H^H^H <ahem> natural "scenery"... ;-)
But not everyone is proud of the achievement. Controversy has swirled around plans for the Mount Graham International Observatory since it got its start 20 years ago atop the 10,700-foot mountain. Opponents contended the observatory would cause the demise of the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel. And the San Carlos Apache Tribe said development would desecrate a sacred mountain. Environmentalists and members of the tribe filed some 40 lawsuits - eight of which ended up before a federal appeals court - but the University of Arizona prevailed. The telescope and mountain observatory, about 125 miles northeast of Tucson, also survived two major forest fires in eight years, the most recent one this summer. "It's a sad day for anyone who believes that the University of Arizona cares about ethics, biology, cultural protection and religious freedom," said longtime project foe Robin Silver, conservation chairman for the Center for Biological Diversity.
http://www.busyweather.com/
(I forgot to log in last time so I'm reposting this under my account this time... D'oh!)
You forgot Spitzer (Link), which is up there today. There have already been more than a few collaborative projects between this space telescope and Hubble.
And on the subject of space telescopes that can see places Earth-based telescopes will never be able to see because of the blocking effects of the atmosphere: Chandra (Link), which can see X-ray sources. This one is my favorite Chandra picture.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
The instruments in the Hubble are likely to be damaged by the brightness of the Earth.
But don't worry, the Keyhole scopes the US intelligence community use are basically Hubbles pointing at the earth, with appropriate instruments. Of course they don't let anyone see the pictures or admit they exist, but that's a minor detail.
A requirement on all observing proposals to Hubble is that the observation can't be done by any ground based telescope. This is so we don't waste the expensive telescope time on something that can be done by the chearper telescopes. So when LBT starts operation, there may be some observations that would have been done on Hubble going to LBT instead. But certainly not all of them.
In any case, the way things are going at NASA HQ, it'll be lucky if Hubble is still operating by the time LBT starts observing with both mirrors.
I live in Safford and you guys should see this thing! Its freakin' huge, you can see it from town and for miles around, this big ol' white box up on the hill. Its awesome! Its also a win for scientists vs. environmentalists. The wackos have opposed this for years and their efforts led to the unchecked fire that almost destroyed the site this summer.
One point about AO that's rarely appreciated is that the point source function (PSF) changes. The spatial resolution doesn't just improve by "factor x." A lot of the light becomes spatially concentrated, but a lot of the light remains in the "wings" of the PSF. One application I'm fond of for high spatial resolution is imaging quasar host galaxies. In quasars, the host galaxy is usually lost in the glare of the central quasar. AO helps, but not so much -- the wings of the PSF still swamp out the faint surrounding galaxy. There are tricks to play, to push the technology to do this kind of science, but cutting edge work is usually complex.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
The basic limitation to the size of a telescope you can take off the Earth's surface is the diameter of the launch vehicle, not platform stability. For reference, Hubble's primary mirror is 2.4m diameter, and the shuttle's bay (largest payload capacity available, I believe?) is 4.5m across.
;)
Future space telescope concepts include deployable mirrors and such.
The moon's only advantage would be if you had a mirror manufacturing facility there, which clearly isn't going to happen anytime soon.
The moon isn't that great a place to build a telescope -- it isn't as stable a platform as being in space-- things hit it and shake it, and there's dust falling all over. You also have the problem of having to land everything gently as it drops into the moon's gravity well, which ends up costing you more energy. You're also in a varying thermal and solar environment, which is hard on equipment and decreases throughput.
Heliocentric orbits (e.g. earth trailing) or the Lagrange points (cue ZZ top) are nicer, more stable environments to put your space telescope into.
Heh, my wife is Native American, and there's a nasty secret here that most will admit if you press them on it. In the various tribal mythologies, almost EVERY halfway interesting tall mountain, plateau, valley, canyon, rock, or steep hill has some kind of ancient legend associated with it and could be construed as "sacred". In fact, in my wifes tribal tradition ALL mountains are the homes of the gods, and building on ANY mountain is defilement (no, she doesn't actually believe that, but there ARE still a few nutballs that do).
Unless there's a burial ground at the top, the term "sacred mountain" doesn't mean much to me.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.