World's Largest Telescope Up and Running

apdyck writes "ITWire is reporting that the world's largest telescope is now up and running, conducting one-year series of tests. The Great Canary Telescope, located in the Canary Islands, is the largest telescope in the world at 10.4 m (34') in diameter. Not for your average stargazer! 'The reflective telescope, sometimes also called GranTeCan, uses technology called adaptive optics, in which the mirror changes its shape in order to correct distortions of light caused by the Earth's atmosphere. The telescope is part of the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, located on the island of La Palma, Spain, within the Atlantic Ocean.'"

Comments

Advice from a (sort of) newbie astronomer

[amstrad]

My opinion: Keep the cheaper telescope and have more money to spend on accessories such as

1. Zero power viewfinder, since the Meade 6x30 is worthless. I use a Telerad. They are great and cheap.
2. A good 8x50 viewfinder. I use an Antares 8X50 Right Angle Erect Image finder.
3. A good set of quality eyepieces (you can never have enough)
4. Some filters (light polution, moon, solar, planetary)
5. decent, but not expensive, pair of field binoculars
6. etc. I could go on for ever...

You might be disappointed if you wait a year, buy the more expensive telescope and have no money left over to buy upgrades.

Some other points:

• The best telescope you can buy is the one that you will actually use. My first telescope was an 8" equatorially mounted newtonian. I regret buying such a big and bulky scope. It was so akward to actually get to a field. A pair of tripod mount binoculars might have been better for me as a beginner.
• I suggest not getting all the fancy computer driven stuff. A good star chart and viewfinder can be much more satisfying. If I can convince you of that then you could get more aperture for the same price with a Dobsonian style telescope.
• Don't fixate on magnifying power. More important is optical clarity and aperture. If you really want magnifying power, you will need more aperture since they are linearly related (google Dawes Limit). Remember this rule of thumb: 50x per inch of aperture.
• Plan your star gazing nights. Have a list of objectives for each night you go out. Know what's in the sky that night and what you want to look at. Don't simply set up the scope and "surf the sky".
• Log your observations in a notebook. This will help you become a better observer.

Re:DSP?

[ChaoticLimbs]

The reason you can't do this is because the purpose of the telescope is light amplification and magnification. The magnification could maybe work without adaptive optics, but if the light from the object does not get intensified by the large amount of reflector area applied, then you end up with dim images. It's also difficult to get sharp images with DSP as the light coming in contains more information than the sensor can send to the DSP. If the DSP instead applies corrective measures to the optics, you capture the image on the CCD better than if you applied it to only the data. It's a matter of losing the data which is NOT gathered by the CCD as a result of atmospheric distortion which prevents such an approach.