Giant Observatories Augur New Era of Cosmology
source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=giant-telescopes
-
-
- mako2424
- added this
Four centuries ago Galileo pointed his spyglass toward the heavens and astronomy changed forever. As the world celebrates the 400th anniversary of the telescope, another cosmological revolution is coming: The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT)—all expected to see first light by 2020—will dwarf the biggest observatories in use today.
The largest, the 42-meter (138-foot) E-ELT, will gather 15 times more light than today's 10-meter (33-foot) optical telescopes. TMT, with its 30-meter- (98.5-foot-) diameter primary mirror, and GMT, delivering the resolving power of a 24.5-meter (80-foot) reflector, will also outclass any current optical telescope.
Astronomers have always wanted bigger telescopes to resolve ever fainter objects. Large-diameter telescopes, essentially big light buckets, collect more photons for a given amount of observing time. Bigger mirrors also boost a telescope's angular resolution, or its ability to measure the separation between two close objects.
This next generation of big telescopes follows the leap in technology achieved with the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in the 1990s.
"We've been using the Keck telescopes for 10 years and we saw … the limitations of 10-meter apertures," says Chuck Steidel, professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and chair of the Science Advisory Committee for TMT. "So we started thinking: there's going to be a next-generation ground-based telescope, (and) we need to start thinking about it now."
The largest, the 42-meter (138-foot) E-ELT, will gather 15 times more light than today's 10-meter (33-foot) optical telescopes. TMT, with its 30-meter- (98.5-foot-) diameter primary mirror, and GMT, delivering the resolving power of a 24.5-meter (80-foot) reflector, will also outclass any current optical telescope.
Astronomers have always wanted bigger telescopes to resolve ever fainter objects. Large-diameter telescopes, essentially big light buckets, collect more photons for a given amount of observing time. Bigger mirrors also boost a telescope's angular resolution, or its ability to measure the separation between two close objects.
This next generation of big telescopes follows the leap in technology achieved with the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in the 1990s.
"We've been using the Keck telescopes for 10 years and we saw … the limitations of 10-meter apertures," says Chuck Steidel, professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and chair of the Science Advisory Committee for TMT. "So we started thinking: there's going to be a next-generation ground-based telescope, (and) we need to start thinking about it now."
-
- groups:
- Green, Earth and Science, Science, Space
-
- tags:
- Green, Earth and Science, Science, Technology, 6 more
-
-
jeenabeena
-
Haha! The telescopes and technology sound awesome... but the European EXTREMELY LARGE Telescope? Are they really lacking that much creativity? Come on guyssss!!!!
- 3 years ago
-
jeenabeena
-
-
mako2424
-
The European Extremely Large Telescope...really? Do we have 8 year-olds naming these things or what?
- 3 years ago
-
mako2424
