Prototype Telescopes Complete Key Test 78
Matthew Sparkes writes "Two prototype antennas for the world's largest array of millimeter-wave telescopes have passed a key test, working to track and image Saturn for more than an hour. Ultimately, ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is expected to resolve details 10 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope when it is completed in 2012."
Cached page (Score:2)
Text (Score:3, Informative)
ALMA will use up to 64 antennas and will be located in the Atacama desert, 5 kilometres above sea level in the Chilean Andes. Designed to look through dust
well, (Score:1, Funny)
---
brought to you by the CAPTCHA "flamers"
Re: (Score:1)
Ultimate Test (Score:1, Funny)
That would rock.
Will they.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a ham operator, and the signals coming from the Hubble are a jumbled mass of unintelligible garble. Further research shows they are using military hardware for secure connections.
I do understand that control codes are administered via ground, however, public key signing would allow transparency while providing a secure platform.
Why do they hide the whole data stream? What do they not want us to see?
Hubble censored? Data encrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the data, I'd imagine that it'd be compressed, encoded, and multiplexed to the point that you'd need special equipment that no normal HAM operator* would have, much less the settings needed to sort it all out and make sense of it.
For public key stuff - that's more computationally intense than private key military encryption methods. Remember, we're talking about systems where a 386 would be considered 'high end'.
*I'm not saying that you're a 'normal' Ham operator, Crawler, but we're talking the space industry here.
Re:Hubble censored? Data encrypted? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, of course you dont want some random joe to take Hubble over. However, they could implement in which "packets" are signed. The data would be separate from the authenticated signature. Along with that, they would want to implement a proper timecode to prevent replay attacks.
But controlling is aside the issue.
And I do hate to mince words but "normal HAM operator"... There isnt such a thing as a normal ham operator these days. Many hams specialize in one or two distinct fields of RF study. I like examining digital commms and remote communications (EME and meteor scatter).Along with my interests, I have bought that A/D board recommended by GnuRadio (normal HAM operator). All I needed was a RF front end and just to downsample to the range of the AD board (0-20 MHz).
I asked for help from some people at NASA and they said the connection was encrypted, and it does seem to be the case.
It doesnt really matter what Im required to build for receiving gear. It's all multi-purpose for us hams. And I do like the idea of splitting the transmitters from the receivers (well, you do have 2 antenna then per kit).
---I'm not saying that you're a 'normal' Ham operator, Crawler, but we're talking the space industry here.
Too true. No offense taken. Still, I can decode the majority of transmissions (the old freq shift Symbol cards are really neat under a scope) and can transmit on quite a few bands. I dont know if you've ever been in a Ham's shack, but the amount of gear they can have (and I too) is pretty immense. I just focus on the digital side a bit more
Re: (Score:2)
Damn clipboard. It was SUPPOSED TO BE (Measurement Computing PCI-DAS4020/12 A/D card).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, of course you dont want some random joe to take Hubble over. However, they
Re: (Score:2)
---Remember what I said about military private-key encryption being cheaper computationally?
I remember seeing special chips when I was with my dad at a naval reserve center (he's a retired chief).. One of the things Im interested in is TEMPEST and such technology dealing with EMP. What I saw was impressive: Ceramic CPUs. They wernt made out of silicon (or that look anyways) but instead they were pearlish white and said to be immune to EM pulses.
From w
Re: (Score:1)
I am kind of curious to see what Mr. Goatse would do with it for a day. (But tell me about it instead of show me.) Cue the Uranus jokes...
More embargo than censorship. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I want you to realize that I am a US citizen and who pays his taxes. I speak from my American view: WHY is governmental science proprietary? Above all other things, science done by the government or by government money should be either 100% public domain, or the % of profits should be returned to the people (Im thinking of public uni'
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of these institutions bring their own budget and they want Value for Money, they need, for a period of time, to have some exclusive access.
I'm sure that when you bring a juicy enough budget and the credentials for high-level research you can have a set of keys to decrypt the data first hand.
Re: (Score:1)
--I want you to realize that I am a US citizen and who pays his taxes. I speak from my American view: WHY is governmental science proprietary? Above all other things, science done by the government or by government money should be either 100% public domain, or the % of profits should be returned to the people (Im thinking of public uni's here). --Creepy Crawler
Unfortunetly being a US citizen and paying taxes does not give you the government's consideration. You didn't pay for the politician's election camp
Re:More embargo than censorship. (Score:5, Informative)
* The data is made available to everyone after a short time delay
* The software to reduce the data is given away for free
* Our papers are generally available for free at http://lanl.arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org]
The point of the short delay is that the person who made the effort to write the proposal to get the telescope time deserves a reward: a short time to write the first paper about the results.
If you look at other branches of science, they aren't nearly as good. But you're flaming your friends.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We *assume* that the data are made available after a short time, but because of the encryption there's no way to correlate released data with observed transmissions from HST. Some people accept NASA's word on this, others don't.
Let me put it this way: Given the present theocratic leanings of the US government, if NASA found something that fundamentally challenged our notion of our place in the universe (like, say, one of the Mars rovers found
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Anyway, learn to read, I'm not the same poster you were arguing with above.
Um, yeah. (Score:2)
Scientists doing basic research do in fact collaborate, cooperate and compete, as it best serves the task at hand. That would explain the whole peer review process, not to mention the rampant cross-pollination of people between labs, projects, funding sources, large scale projects, etc.
The vast majority of the results do get back to the public, you benefit from them, and they are shared.
I pay my taxes too -
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Once the data has been captured it will become available after a proprietary period during which the principal investigator will have exclusive access to it. I believe this period will be one year.
Ow, cool. (Score:1)
Re:Ow, cool. (Score:5, Funny)
It would call you by itself
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
2nd: Where is that information? The only text on the Software/Hardwaresites is "Under construction.".
Or contains that phrase the information of running older RedHat versions
Apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So what? Stars and other black bodies radiate in both visible and microwave. If you're trying to resolve nearby objects (like binary stars or planetary systems), either one will work. Resolution is resolution. And besides, the angle resolved by a telescope is proportional to wavelength, so that just makes it MORE impressive. This telescope has a better resolution than the Hubble, even though it's working with 1000 times the waveleng
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So in other words, we already have radio telescopes (or rather telescope arrays) with larger resolutions than hubble, and the level of technology required in building large optical telescopes is simply miles ahead of the radio telescopes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So? ALMA images the universe in different wavelengths than Hubble/Spitzer at al, but can do so at very high resolution. What really matters is how many wavelengths your aperture is. An 18 km baseline at a 1 mm wavelength is more wavelengths across than a 2.2 meter mirror at 600 nm. A lot of the highest resolution imaging is done with aperture synthesis nowadays, whether it's astronomers doing long-baseline interferometry, or using synt
the use of space-telescopes? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only advantages left are for specific wavelengths (like near-infrared), because the atmosphere absorbs most of that, but even that is more and more debatable, now that new instruments and detectors are becomming so sensitive that they can detect and use it on Earth too. I'm wondering, with the multi-billion costs of space-telescopes, if it's really worth the money? With the same amount of money, one could make a huge interferometer-telescope with a diameter of the Earth (though it would need to consist out of many 10-meter telescopes for light-gathering purposes). I'm all for space-exploration, but what still justifies the expense of a space-telescope, if earth-bound ones can do as well for a fraction of the price?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason WMAP was a space telescope was, as you said, so that it wouldn't have to look through the water-vapor in the atmosphere. ACT [princeton.edu] and ALMA will be earth-based because it's impractical to send tele
Re:the use of space-telescopes? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is hard to separate hype from reality. Hubble is used as the benchmark in many claims because of its popularity. But as you partially pointed out, there are some rough-spots in Earth-based techniques:
* Spectrum coverage: some important frequencies are blocked by the atmosphere.
* Ecology: Earth scopes are accused of messing up mountain peaks and views and "sacred lands".
* Guide-stars: Some earth-bound techniques require bright guide-stars near a scene to compensate for atmospheric distortion. This limits their use in dim portions of the sky.
* Southern hemisphere: It is hard to see all portions of the sky well from any given point on Earth.
* Newness: Many of the hi-res earth-scope techniques are new and complicated. Without a reference point, such as Hubble images, they may be collecting unintended artifacts of the technology.
But it is an interesting issue to consider.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
All you need is cat if you get it right the first time. It's got all the keyboard shortcuts you need. ^D means done.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
But "floating" space junk has been pelting Hubble, so space is polluted also.
Re:the use of space-telescopes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two exciting ones are Planck, which will make extremely precise measurements of the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) and--if we're lucky--LISA, a gravity wave telescope that will open a completely new part of the universe to us. The science prospects for LISA are staggering, and it is simply impossible to build an interferometer with a 5 million km arm length on the ground!
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
you see almost no free spot in the northern hemisphere for an optical telescope. Also, radio-frequency polution
will give the VLA and similar a hard time in years to come. This could be justification to go to space
(maybe the moon?). So far, Chile is the best place to put a telescope.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, the circumference of the earth at the equator is 40,076 km. The average distance to the Moon is 382,500 km. I'm not sure this LISA can be built, in space or not. I know it supposed to be three probes hovering 5 million km apart with no physical connection, but keeping their positions reletive to each other accurate over those kind of distances would be no
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Also if you are looking for chemical signitures (oxygen, methane) etc then you will have problems with the atmosphere again.
Space also gives you 24 hour observation, obviously not possible on the earth during the day. Apart from that you get a free vaccuum which will help in keeping the instrument cool. This is useful for all observations, not just infra red (although it is particularly good for that). Ground based telescopes are more suited to
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
space...the final...something. (Score:2)
Well...*actually*... I didn't make any conclusion, I asked an open question.
It surprises me that the most interesting answer comes from an anonymous coward with score 0; if I had mod points, I'd mod you up. UYou should really post such things with your nick, you know
RFB Space-based arrays (Score:2)
I'd like to see an array of space based telescopes set out in a pattern much bigger than the Earth, perhaps at the L2 LaGrange point. That should allow us to see planets in other solar systems quite well.
I don't see how you can do that on Earth.
well (Score:1)
Just in time for the digital TV conversion! (Score:2)
End of the world as we know it (Score:2)
Great. It'll be completed just in time for the end of the world [wikipedia.org]!
Distributed telescopes - question (Score:1)
I was envisioning a small unit that plugs into a PC and has GPS location ability so we know where it is in the array, and the software reports data and location back to the central system. If everyone interested in astronomy picked one up we'd soon have a big array, and it would be reasonably low cost too if everyone paid to cover some of the cost of their antenna.
I suspect if we have enou