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Astronomers Find the Calmest Place On Earth
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Live Science reports that astronomers in search of the perfect site to take pictures of the heavens have combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect image quality — cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence. They have pinpointed the coldest, driest, calmest place on earth, known simply as Ridge A, 13,297 feet high on the Antarctic Plateau. 'It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all,' says study leader Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory. 'The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers.' Located within the Australian Antarctic Territory, the site is 89 miles from the PLATO (PLATeau Observatory) international robotic observatory. The new site would be superior to the best existing observatories on high mountain tops in Hawaii and Chile, Saunders says. 'Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.'"
...after half a blue xanax.
but I still think the best spot for observational astronomy has to be the far side of the Moon. You've got several thousand miles of light and EM shielding, and a good couple weeks' seeing a month when the Sun goes down. Once the 'scopes cool off, there's no warping. What's not to love?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
It's also in the Middle of Nowhere. So getting to it is going to be very expensive.
Anyhow, we're on to you, Mr. I'm-extraordinarily-antisocial Astronomer. We are not going to support your social avoidance issues with a multimillion dollar playpen. Just take your meds!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Isn't that where the second Stargate resides?
Hey..I can see my house from here.
This is where I should go to write my thesis then Do we get slashdot there ? or is that considered not calm ?
Quick, before anyone else can, let's raise some venture capital and build a few resorts there.
The commercial practically writes itself!
Ridge A villas, your ticket to paradise on earth!*
*Ridge A Villas is not responsible for hypothermia, loss of limbs due to gangrene, or Abominable Snowman attacks. Any lawsuit filed against Ridge A Villas must be filed in Antarctica county district court jurisdiction within 90 hours of the incident.
Yea I think that I need some calm spot too. It's too hectic in Boston.
*Ridge A Villas is not responsible for hypothermia, loss of limbs due to gangrene, or Abominable Snowman attacks. Any lawsuit filed against Ridge A Villas must be filed in Antarctica county district court jurisdiction within 90 hours of the incident.
Pfft, you can disclaim whatever you want. In court, it'll be easy to show that Ridge A Villas are responsible for the Abominable Snowman attacks, due to cutting him out of the mascot deal and resulting merchandising royalties.
The enemies of Democracy are
Could someone convert that into a number the rest of the world understands?
Located within the Australian Antarctic Territory
Note that the USA, Russia, China, and many other countries do not recognize this territory as being in any way Australian.
Except for the fact that it's in fucking Antarctica? I think the researchers currently in Hawaii would be pretty annoyed to have to move. :-)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
...the danger of fire is very low - take note, Mount Wilson Observatory!
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
The sun don't shine.
Calmest place on Earth? Wow! Sounds like the perfect vacation spot for me to get away from the stressful city life!
I wonder why the Katabatic winds don't blow there. I thought the entire continent was pretty much consumed by these winds. Learn something new everyday.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I wonder about the utility of this telescope. It is claimed that the images obtained will be 'almost as good as' those from Hubble. Perhaps during most of the year, but during Antarctic summer, the sun shines the whole day, so the telescope will be useless a great portion of the time. Or, maybe it's not simply an optical telescope? In either case, the cost of building and maintaining such an observatory are high. If it is to be manned, higher still. If it is build on the ice pack, it had better generate very little heat, or it will sink just like so many Antarctic bases.
How, I realize that it is difficult to get time on the really good telescopes around the world, and in space. So, perhaps this 'less than Hubble' is still practical. I just wish we had the money to build more space telescopes. particularly deep space ones, away from the solar wind.
Robert Langdon: [reading off papyrus scroll] The holy observatory 'neath RIDGE waits. The blade and chalice guarding o'er her gates. Adorned in masters' loving art, she lies. She rests at last beneath the SHARPER & CALMER & COLDER starry skys.
source - IM'dB
It can only see half the sky due to being very close to the South Pole. Near-equatorial telescopes can see 80% or more of the sky over the course of the year. A polar telescope would be useful for statistical surveys, etc. but would miss, on average, 50% of observations unique to one point in the sky.
How long before someone does something like this; http://www.icehotel-canada.com?
So ... where is it?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Once they get to ridge A, they'll find the city of the Elder Things. It's calm because even the *weather* is afraid to go there . . . Tekeli-li!
Sounds ideal....but how are you gonna keep the telescope lenses from frosting up?
Though I'm assuming it's nothing like Antartica, it looks like it still might get a little nippy at some of those observatories in Hawaii.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=19.825294,-155.472518&spn=0.005834,0.007521&t=h&z=17
Of course, I'm living in Minnesota now, so it's still probably shorts and t-shirts weather.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
See! We'd have much better pictures of stars all over the planet if we just got rid of the ozone like is happening over Antarctica.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
I was curious to try and see Ridge A in Google Earth. GE didn't seem to know it. The images of Antarctica are for the most part really low rez. But, there are some interesting anomalies in GE. Firstly, there is a big white "frying pan" over the south pole, secondly, if I go to 90,90 (north pole) GE seems to have floating point problems. -90,90 seems to work. I get a kaleidoscope of blue vectors when I scroll in or out. Thirdly, if I try to go "to here", (Antarctica) from Cupertino, CA it says "We could not understand your search." Bummer.
Let's build a big science lab there and fill it with people!
Note to USA, Russia and China. Leave us the @#% alone. I heard antipsychotic medication can help with both megalomania and delusions of grandeur.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Nighttime lows only get down to -4C (25F) so yeah basically t-shirt weather to a midwesterner.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Calmest place on earth
Yeah, lets all go there and make a huge PAARTY!
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
... no pesky ozone layer to hinder the telescope!!
'Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.'
Good luck seeing the north star.
No Seven Eleven. No Mickey D's. Sounds like a sucky place to work.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I thought the calmest place on earth was in the Dandelion Patch. Time for a break!
Cool. The Hairy Ball Theorem in mathematics predicts that such a place exists.
BYOTT
Bring Your Own Tauntaun.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Oh, give me a home where the penguins roam
And the frigid astronomers play
Where seldom is heard a single word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours
Home, home on Ridge A
And the frigid astronomers play
Where seldom is heard a single word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free
The breezes so calm and light
That I would not exchange my home on Ridge A
For all of the cities so bright
my bedroom =(
Doesn't anyone consider the massive drawback of putting a telescope near the south pole? If anything interesting ever happens in the northern sky, you're SOL.
Unfortunately the Northern Sky isn't covered by
that view from the Antarctic.
> Yea it is bit crazy for HR...
There is already one remote-controlled telescope in Antarctica. No need for permanent staff. Astronomy has not been done by looking through eyepieces for quite a while.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
How can a place have no weather? Every single place on the surface planet has weather of some description all the time.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
I assume there's a plan for this- anyone know?
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Newsflash, plenty of telescopes already reside in Antarctica, some within walking distance of the South Pole (They had one installed). A small colony of scientists spend winters there (not permanently). The idea of sticking a research station with nuclear batteries in there is not out of the question. Certainly not if they make it automated.
No weather at all? Wonder what those people will talk about:
- God it's so nothing out there!
- You tell me, I've been out there the whole morning! I can't stand this nothingness anymore...
- Hey, have you seen the snow today? It's kind of yellower today isn't it?
Is the Vatican funding this? Considering all the terrible news that I get bombarded with, including university closures, tuition costs, and incredibly poorly paid teachers... that funding is available for yet another fancy telescope just kind of makes me wonder.
...because now that it's set a record, it will be full of tourists.
I wonder if they would have the same trouble dealing with the altitude in Antarctica. At the Keck observatory, researchers have to travel to the top of the mountain every day they do research. I heard nobody is allowed to live up there for environmental reasons. A daily 4000 meter ascent will make you delirious. My advisor said they had to spell out exactly what to do each day in their notebooks just to make sure they don't forget what they're doing while on the mountain.
Aren't the poles the Land of the Midnight Sun. That means that during the antarctic 'summer', they can't do (any?) observations for a period of consecutive days, and have very short nights during a fairly long period surrounding the summer solstice? I mean, I suppose the upshot of that is there is also a period of continuous days of darkness at the winter solstice, and very long nights for a fairly long period surrounding it.
Perhaps the air down there is so pure that, as long as the telescope isn't aimed too near the Sun, they can still make observations despite the Sun?
you could sell plots to people with the pitch: "Best view of the North Star Ever!" I am sure it would be a filled up sub-divison in no time!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
For people who want to see what it is to live there, we've recorded a conference then visioconference with an international team of astronomers living several months a year at Concordia Base on Dome C (not Ridge A, but probably similar). It's at http://stream.unice.fr/concordia.html. Audio is in French but there are lots of pictures and video of the outside. Shameless plug : The recording was done with the help of the Boxtream project.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Water vapor can easily be 99.99+% removed from any fixed source(electrical gen, living quarters), to be condensed and frozen/used elsewhere. Only adds cost and some energy use.
How about some balance?
- The cost of doing almost anything, anywhere in Antarctica is not far short of a space mission.
- It's "daytime" for at least half the year.
- You can see barely half the sky - probably less.
- Did anybody mention that it's Antarctica yet?
All things considered, Hawaii and Chile are far superior in most respects which matter.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/06/1827220&tid=2248
May I suggest the Chinese had figured out the substance of this story some one year ago.
Surely there are roads? How did they get the materials up there to build it in the first place?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
...metric miles?
How about some balance?
- The cost of doing almost anything, anywhere in Antarctica is not far short of a space mission.
Nonsense. Sure, it's more expensive than putting a telescope on Kitt Peak, Mauna Kea, or Chile. But you're still orders of magnitude away from a space mission. A half-meter telescope on a "small explorer" (SMEX) NASA mission is over 105 million dollars, and that doesn't include the launch costs. Getting that 250 kg into space costs on the order of $20,000 USD per kg, still a fairly conservative estimate.
Based on the overland traverses that the Italians and French undertake to Dome C per year, getting to a site like Ridge A would be more like $10/kg (naturally assuming that you're making good use of the traverse and taking lots of stuff up there in one go).
So the costs aren't even in the same ball park.
- It's "daytime" for at least half the year.
And infrared and submillimeter astronomers can observe during the day. Incidentally, most of the big outstanding questions about the assembly of galaxies and star formation will be solved at these wavelengths -- which is where the Antarctic atmosphere is most advantageous.
- You can see barely half the sky - probably less.
You get the Southern sky only, true. But most of the Milky Way is in the South, and you can observe it without interruption -- 24/7. Time domain astronomy is something we've only scratched the surface of -- and there are major new projects devoted to it such as LSST. Antarctica could play a significant role here.
All things considered, Hawaii and Chile are far superior in most respects which matter.
As long as you ignore the poorer image quality, unstable atmosphere with large diurnal variations, comparatively soggy atmospheric water content, 100x higher infrared background -- yeah, Chile and Hawaii are far better. :)
Yes there are roads and they do drive up the mountain. They are not allowed to stray from the road. But it's the change in altitude that affects you physiologically. At breakfast you're fine, but before lunchtime your brain is oxygen-deprived and you're feeling not all there.
A half-meter telescope? Gimme a fucking break. That's uselessly small even in IR astro terms. Go install a real telescope (5m class and up) and all the necessarily extensive support facilities then tell us how much it cost. Better yet, something like the VLT. Still cheaper than a space mission?
As for the rest, that too is covered by the Law of Diminishing Returns. For the small (and debatable) additional benefits achieved by constructing a useful observatory in Antarctica and supporting it, the cost and effort involved becomes truly STAGGERING.
...what you're looking at
Inventor, Artist http://www.Rubber-Power.com
Yeah, lets all go there and make a huge PAARTY!
You're joking, but it helps lead me to a serious point, so thanks.
Every remote area I've ever visited, there's always been at least one beer can or water bottle littering the ground, I make it a point to pick it up and bring it back with me for proper disposal, a ritual of mine, leaving a place in a better state than how I found it.
Once, some friends and I were camping in a very remote beach, when suddenly a car caravan of families arrived, setting up camp with a LOUD diesel generator, and the male thirtysomethings proceeded to drink brandy and coke while blasting horrifying pop music with the volume set to 11, even placing a television on a table in the sand, as the wives and children did their thing. As we morbidly witnessed the spectacle while discussing a move to another beach, within a couple of hours the incredible happened, the drunken intruders got into a nasty argument that almost came to blows, then proceeded to hastily pack up and leave, leaving behind of course, empty potato chip bags and the like, which we picked up.
With a profound sense of disbelief and relief, we reckoned this is what happens when instead of leaving the city behind, one drags along as much of it as possible.
The "emptiness" of remote nature may be like a psychic mirror, the state of mind you bring is the one that stares back, and in the aforementioned instance, whatever glimpses they got weren't pretty, and surely they didn't even notice what the fuck hit them.
Put in a less mystical way, instead of tranquil nature benefiting them, they were unable to see beyond their own chaotic, irritable whirlwind, amplified by a lack of "conveniences" and that pesky sand getting everywhere. Why chaotic? Because they were trying to control too much of their immediate environment, case in point - that damned television in the sand, a potent symbol and symptom if there ever was one.
Whatever the case, having ejected themselves like a wooden splinter, these people should think inwards and learn something these experiences, difficult at best, so failing that, stick to Disneyland, Las Vegas and the like. Want nature? Go to a zoo.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Not to mention, there's about half the sky you're never going to see.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
(southern lights)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)
wouldn't these auroras make skygazing in antarctica like trying to stargaze in the middle of new york city? (light pollution)
i know they don't go all the time, but at that far south, wouldn't you get them pretty frequently?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)#Frequency_of_occurrence
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think you miss the point. Even a small 0.5-meter telescope in space is a SMEX-class NASA mission and costs well over 100 million bucks. If you can do some of the same science with a *comparably small* ground-based telescope, you win. By a lot.
Similarly, your 5-meter (or larger) telescope on the ground would be competing with SOFIA and Herschel and JWST for many applications. Those are all billion dollar class projects.
If you really want to compare a 10-meter telescope on the ground to a half-meter telescope in space, feel free... the costs start to get pretty similar. But the comparison in terms of scientific capability is not usually valid.
And by *usually*, I mean that there are some capabilities that can only be done in space. Ground facilities will never compete in those genres. But when you *can* do something from the ground, by all means you should do so.
BTW, these folks would be bemused by your comment that a half-meter telescope would be "uselessly small".