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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.'"

5 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Were they looking in the optical range? by ttapper04 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I have seen radio telescopes linked in such a way to form a "larger" antenna. Is this similar?

  2. Cool by CaffeineAddict2001 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It would make a great plugin for google earth. Instead of zooming in on earth from space, you could zoom into space from earth.

  3. Curiousity Question by StickyWidget · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "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.'"

    So, when measuring the distance between each of the telescopes, did he do it through the planet (diameter), or did he measure the distance across the surface of the planet (circumference)? Cause that kind makes a huge difference, and really screws up any valid comparison between the two distances.

    ~Sticky
    /You know, kind of like comparing English furlongs and Australian wallabies. Just way too different.

  4. Really? by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Because as I recall, Beowulf killed Grendel's mother. During the whole story of Beowulf, he is never defeated, though he does die of his wounds after defeating the dragon.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  5. Why bother being instantaneous? by aapold · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I mean, what they observed already happened long ago. We're just observing it now, and that's fine, but theoretically they could just each independantly observe, timedcode, and then sync it all up later.

    Its not like it was a live event where you had to have it just then.

    --
    "Waste not one watt!" - CZ