DARPA's New Hi-Tech Telescope 89
coondoggie writes "You can bet that if there are little red aliens running around on Mars, or spaceships patrolling other planets in our solar system for that matter, a recently powered-up telescope built by researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency might just be able to see them. The Air Force, which operates the DARPA-developed Space Surveillance Telescope says the telescope's design, featuring unique image-capturing technology known as a curved charge coupled device system, as well as very wide field-of-view, large-aperture optics, doesn't require the long optics train of a more traditional telescopes."
I wonder what the Air Force needs to track... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wonder what the Air Force needs to track... (Score:5, Informative)
Air Force has huge departments dedicated to space.
http://www.afspc.af.mil/units/index.asp
They manage GPS satellites as well as scan the skies and catalog 10's of thousands of pieces of space debris.
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If you think the US Air Force's space initiatives are about "cataloging space debris", I've got a HAARP facility in Alaska that I'm willing to sell you, cheap.
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If you think the US Air Force's space initiatives are about "cataloging space debris", I've got a HAARP facility in Alaska that I'm willing to sell you, cheap.
They do need to track space debris if they're going to launch [more] weapons into it. Also, since you mention HAARP, it could theoretically be used to move pieces of it around... Of course, I think we both know that if you're in charge of tracking space debris then you also are in a great position to track everyone's satellites... Or ICBMs.
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Surely ... wouldn't it be more effective to launch the [weapons, telescopes, whatever] around or past the debris, rather than launching directly into the debris?
OK, perhaps if you're trying to "shoot up" (rather than "shoot down") a particular piece of space debris,
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acronym fail? (Score:4, Insightful)
Curved Charged Coupled Device? Wouldn't that be CCCD?
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Curved Charged Coupled Device? Wouldn't that be CCCD?
Too close to CCCP for DARP to use it.
Re:acronym fail? (Score:5, Funny)
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And how did they get charge to curve?
Sounds very General Relativistic.
Only way to do that on that scale is supermassive micro black hole.
So that is what the LHC was built to manufacture!
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no. "curved" is the shape of the CCD, not a type
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device [wikipedia.org]
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Joking? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can bet that if there are little red aliens running around on Mars...
You're joking, right? That telescope is going to be pointed at little humans of all colors running around on Earth.
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That telescope is going to be pointed at little humans of all colors running around on Earth.
Phew! For a minute there I thought they were going to be racist about their surveillance!
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Both? I mean, I know that race has no scientific basis, but surely whatever system you use includes more than two? Or is it just "us" and "them"?
Re:Joking? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's "tossed around" because of things like the average American "black" having 1/3 of their genes coming from European ancestors. Do they have a "race"? What about Obama? Does he have a "race"? If you posit that he's 50% "black" and 50% "white", then what of his children? They have a mother with some undetermined amount of European and African ancestry. How many generations do you try to keep track of? How many do you go back with? Do you have some kind of a genetic or physical test that can determine his "race" with any kind of scientific rigor?
Even that chart you linked has all sorts of little red marks in the supposed purple "race". So yes, you can say things like "people with an ancestor from x region are more likely to have y trait". But that is worlds different from being able to toss people into categories. All it takes is for one of those ancestors with y trait to walk over to another part of the world and mate to throw off your classification system... that's not of very much use.
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It's the only place where races intermingle anymore.
I still don't know how you define "race" - but you are completely wrong. People in the mountains of India look partly Chinese. People in far eastern Russia look partly Chinese. South America is almost completely racially mixed. The Caribbean is almost completely mixed. Even in Africa, you will see a wide range of skin colors that clearly indicates a mixed heritage.
anyone who != their_native_race is dead too
First you'd have to tell me exactly what a native race is? What arbitrary point in time do you choose to freeze the "races". Is it 600 years ago
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First you'd have to tell me exactly what a native race is? What arbitrary point in time do you choose to freeze the "races". Is it 600 years ago prior to the European explorations? (...) And if you freeze history 50,000 years ago you won't have any Europeans!
Not that I'm siding with the racists but your logic that we can't find a purebred human is a bit like saying we can't find a purebred dog. Except we clearly have a standard of "races" and "mixed breeds" there, even though they all at some point come from domesticated wolves over the last 15000 years. I also think many would agree that some breeds are smarter and easier to train than others, that it's not just the same mind in the body of everything from a Chihuahua to a Great Dane.
Pretty much all we humans
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can't find a purebred human is a bit like saying we can't find a purebred dog.
Dog breeding is similar, but different. First of all, you would never buy a "purebred" dog unless the breeder could produce a certificate proving such. That's because I could conceivably breed a golden retriever with an "unpure" dog and get something that looks just like a golden retriever. Thus, a dog "breed" is really just a paper trail and a group of similar features. Most dogs don't have a breed at all - they are mutts. So the whole concept of "breeds" is only useful for the select few who either want o
Re:Joking? (Score:5, Informative)
You can bet that if there are little red aliens running around on Mars...
You're joking, right? That telescope is going to be pointed at little humans of all colors running around on Earth.
You're joking, right? You know it's a telescope and not a satellite.
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That's where the curved part comes into play. Duh.
Re:Joking? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know it's a telescope and not a satellite.
Those two aren't mutually exclusive.
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You're joking, right? You know it's a telescope and not a satellite.
What do you think a spy satellite which images stuff in the visible light spectrum is? Hint: it's a telescope on a satellite in space.
Having said that, this design seems more suitable to spotting rivals' covert space assets than to watching people on Earth. Maybe such a telescope at geostationary orbit could spot large scale changes in real time, such as volcanic eruptions, tsunami hitting a shoreline, or large industrial explosions.
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Actually I should have RTFA'd first. Apparently it is a ground based telescope. I foolishly assumed that a device named the Space Surveillance Telescope would be based in, you know, space.
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Galileo's telescope was for Space Surveillance too...
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The word space is redundant. All telescopes of this size are for looking at things in space. The Hubble Space Telescope is called as such because it is floating in space.
i wonder.... (Score:3)
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They likely only mentioned that due to a prior experience where they proved the moon landing was not faked. Since they could not use a telescope to view debris left by us on the moon they used a high power laser to hit a reflector we left on the moon and receive the bounced beam.
The same episode also explains why a telescope can not view debris on the moon. Find it and watch it.
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Colbert asked them directly. They said they'd researched it, and were told that even Hubble can't see the gear and footprints.
And it was The Big Bang Theory that verified the existence of a reflector on the moon [wikia.com].
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They said Hubble couldn't.
Webb might be able to.
Probably not but (Score:2)
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The problem with that is people can't orbit a telescope around the moon for themselves to verify (so images of these things on the moon are just part of the conspiracy). Even if they could, they could still say that the objects being imaged were unmanned or something like that.
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So the best thing to do is to take them to the moon and then take them outside the view the site directly. Can't have a helmet on as the visor could be an ultra high definition screen.
Now there's a mission we could fake, just make certain parts of it very realistic.
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No.
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Does this mean we can point the thing at the moon where we previously landed and finally get pictures of the lander so all those "we didn't go to the moon!" crazies will finally be quiet?
Won't work... One word....GNU/GIMP...
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unique image-capturing technology ? (Score:2)
The press release is a little breathless. Astronomers have been using CCDs for 20 years now.
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They're calling it "aberration free" but they're really saying "we're too lazy to deconvolve things".
It's a CCD. It's going to pixellate the image. Badly. There's your aberration.
Oh, sure, we'll all be stunned and awed at how "sharp and clear" the "images" look when we render them pixel-for-pixel on our puny monitors.
But hold them up to the sky and they'll look like Atari game graphics by comparison.
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No, my strong suit is a singlet and T-shirt, and stiff-soled shoes.
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Not if you spent your money buiding a higher-resolution CCD instead of a curved one...
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Where is Alex Jones when we need him? (Score:1)
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article on curved focal surfaces (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ptbmagazine.com/content/040103_ora.html [ptbmagazine.com]
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From the article I linked: "Curved electro-optical detectors will enable the development of new optical design configurations that can be smaller than conventional flat-field designs, thereby benefiting many aerospace applications." In other words, with curved detectors, you can use lighter, simpler optics. because they don't have to adapt to (correct for) a flat sensor surface.
Wide FoV = low magnification (Score:2)
The purpose of this telescope is fast scanning of large areas, not fine detail on single distant objects. By invoking red (!) LGMs, the FA author is just doing a poor job at sensationalizing something he doesn't understand (just the sort of vacuous hype we get too much of here).
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GEODSS replacement? (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds like a replacement for GEODSS. [janes.com]
GEODSS, from 1980, was the first fully computerized telescope system. It basically looks at the sky, section by section, subtracts out all known objects, and reports the rest. So it finds new satellites, space junk, and even dark objects that occult stars. Three GEODSS sites are still running; a fourth is loaned out to Lincoln Labs to find and track near-Earth asteroids. [mit.edu] (Somewhat to the annoyance of astronomers who had been discovering comets and asteroids manually, the automated Lincoln Labs GEODSS discovered them by the thousands.) Each site has at least two identical telescopes, and some have a wide-angle Schmidt.
One of the less-often mentioned features of GEODSS is that it can illuminate a target. One telescope can be used to aim a laser at an object in low orbit, to get a clear picture of darker objects.
Money well spent (Score:2)
little red aliens running around on Mars
So they've already dis-proven that the men from Mars are green. That makes more sense as green sure does contrast against the red planet. I'd say this telescope has already proven its worth.
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Red undoubtedly refers to the little fellars' political allegiance, rather than their skin colour. This is DARPA, after all.
Oh yeah? (Score:1)
Funky Design (Score:2)
Any optics experts want to field this one?
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Looking at this rendering of the design [darpa.mil], my first reaction is: how the hell can it see anything with that enormous chunk in the middle? Is that the secondary reflector? Or is that where the curved CCD will be housed (obviating the need for a secondary: it would be the secondary). And there's an awful lot of superstructure to hold that thing in place: won't that also obscure the field of view? Any optics experts want to field this one?
First note that it is reported to have a three and a half meter mirror. All mirrors in this size are really multiple mirrors that use servos to keep them in common focus, so it is likely really a ring of smaller mirrors.
Second, of course the CCD camera is mounted in front of the mirrors. No high performance optical system puts extra optics in the way, and with a super-fast F/1 focal length it forms the image directly in front of the mirror, only longer focal length mirrors can extract the image to the side
Where is it deployed? (Score:2)
Maui Space Surveillance Site (AMOS) would be my guess.