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A Telescope as Big as the Earth

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the now-come-the-arguments-on-where-to-point-it-next dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "A week ago, seven telescopes around the world were linked together to watch a distant galaxy called 3C273 in real time and create a single world telescope. The data from these telescopes, which are located in Australia, China and Europe, was streamed around the world at a rate of 256 Mb per second. One of the Australian researchers involved in the project said that it was the first time that astronomers have been able to instantaneously connect telescopes half a world apart. He added that 'the diameter of the Earth is 12,750 km and the two most widely separated telescopes in our experiment were 12,304 km apart.'"

4 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Real time? by Odiumjunkie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > A week ago, seven telescopes around the world were linked together to watch a distant galaxy called 3C273 in real time and create a
    > single world telescope.

    Not to be overly pedantic, but the data were streamed from all over the world to a location in Europe, then processed, and then streamed to China for viewing.

    Even though they weren't going over the public net, that's still almost certainly >1000ms latency. Harldy "real time".

    Although, I suppose that's acceptable on top of the two and a half years it took for the photons to get to us.

  2. OK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think I would rather have one high altitude large aperture 'scope looking at an object all night rather than two at the opposite sides of the world. The ones on the opposite sides of the world won't be able to look for long before one of them disappears over the horizon. Not only that but they are looking through the maximum amount of atmosphere.

    This stunt is a technical accomplishment but maybe not that important in and of itself. What would get me excited would be a couple of orbiting 'scopes.

  3. A source of hope by athloi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We have problems on earth, but most of them will never be solved. Poverty will always exist. Stupidity will always exist. So will criminality, alcoholism, drug addiction, and failure. We can either spend our time obsessing over the negative, or we can choose to explore space and find a new future. I'm glad that we continue to probe space, to consider sending up ships, and most all, that we keep space exploration alive in our minds as a source of hope.

    --
    technical writing / development
  4. Re:Wrong it is not 4.22 years. by Jarjarthejedi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best way to reply to a pedantic post...by being more pedantic.

    --
    There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing