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Space Science

Antarctic Telescope? 277

Posted by michael from the draw-straws-for-who-has-to-wipe-the-snow-off dept.
angkor pastes "'A novel Antarctic telescope with 16-m diameter mirrors would far outperform the Hubble Space Telescope, and could be built at a tiny fraction of its cost, says a scientist from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney, Australia.'"
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Antarctic Telescope? More

Antarctic Telescope?

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  • Rather quite expensive in the long term (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:10PM (#10292183)
    Even though the Hubble Space Telescope was expensive initially, you must admit that it has been cheap and easy to repair. This new telescope would be located all the way down in Antarctica. Has anyone priced flights to Antarctica lately? When there's a problem, it's not like you could just hop on the next Space Shuttle and slap another lens in. And plus it's COLD down there! It'd probably need some kind of heater or something. Think of the electric bills!

    It's ridiculous how these "scientists" really don't think these things through. I expect more from people with fancy "college degrees" and smartypants names like "Will."

  • Press Release... funding (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:10PM (#10292184)
    "A telescope there would perform as well as a much larger one anywhere else on Earth. It's nearly as good as being in space", said Dr. Will Saunders of the Anglo-Australian Observatory.

    Nearly as good, nearly. I am still a huge fan of Hubble... so forgive me. :)

    As someone who survives on research money for a living, I am sad to see what direction funding is going. Previously, those who had tbe best ideas would get the money.

    Now, he who gets the press, gets the money.

    This whole article is basically a press release by this guy. I'll summarize the article for you...

    "Give me money because I _think_ I can build some cool stuff."
    • ""Give me money because I _think_ I can build some cool stuff.""

      Yeah, NASA should sue him for infringing on their patent.

    • "As someone who survives on research money for a living, I am sad to see what direction funding is going. Previously, those who had tbe best ideas would get the money."

      OK, I am going to get flamed by all of the /. "only the government has the resources to fund XXXYYYZZZ research but is wasting it in Iraq" types who are politicizing every article on this site, but surviving on government research money is quite different than doing corporate research in which some kind of measurable return on investment is
      • This article is presented by a someone who has an idea about how to get excellent results for a fraction of the cost of Hubble or a successor.

        Being a self-professed expert on corporate-funded research you should also be aware that old-folks homes are littered with people who lost all their money taking this sort of self-aggrandisig press-release cum "article" seriously. Corporate "research" is riddled with con-artists, greedy half-wits and outright lunatics who were laughed out of any peer-reviewed scient

        • I dare you to name any profound, completely corporately-funded discovery, which was not based wholly or in major parts on any prior research in public academia.

          Heh. Name the reverse. All research is a tangled mess of dependencies. Academia does not exist in a vacuum. To settle such an argument one must go all the back to the question of "which came first: commerce, or scholarly endeavors?" At that point, you're too far away from the present to clearly say whether one piggybacked more on the other.

          • Name the reverse

            Pick any. They all are based on scientific process. We are talking science here, no? And a fundamental property of scientific process is free exchange of ideas. Peer-review being only a small part of it. No scientist in the world, at any time, is capable of functioning in a vacuum. All profound discoveries made by famous men and women are mere tips of mountains of thought that were built by other free thinkers who went before them. In essence, commerce is an anathema of science because of t

        • Here is one that is near and dear to me: the Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter.

          Before the GFCI, the primary electrical circuit protector was the circuit breaker. Does some nice things, but it is NOT good at detecting when current is leaking to ground, say, through your finger, arm chest, leg and foot to a puddle of water in the bathroom. Two companies realized the potentially beneficial (and hence lucrative) potential for such a device and independently developed it. It is known as the GFCI -- and not G
          • Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter

            GFCI is a mere device constructed out of existing electronic components, bringing no new scientific discoveries at all. It is merely an example of clever engineering, something commerce indeed can excel at.

            Oh, hey, what about that computer you typed your comment on? Did any corporate-funded research went into that?

            Here we go again. The PC is en exaple of engineering application of science, such as that of solid state physics, mathematics, binary logic, data structures, al

  • It may not be done because it's not as "cool" as having an earth orbiting telescope.

  • idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:12PM (#10292206)
    that's neato, we can even get it powered by penguins! in more ways than one!

  • But... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kdougherty ( 772195 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:13PM (#10292211)
    Would this telescope be as beneficial as the Hubble considering the Hubble isn't attached to any surface and can freely move in space... This Antartic version would have limited viewing capabilities, so which would you rather have?
    • >so which would you rather have?

      Well you forget something in the equation, the price!
      Because if money is not in the equation, I would rather like to have a lunar based telescope, but it may be a 'little bit expensive'.

    • Re:But... (Score:2, Informative)

      by 3D Lover ( 467981 )
      Yea. What if they want a picture of Polaris. Woops, there's a big rock in the way!!!
    • Yeah, what happens when we run out of space to explore within the Antarctic telescope's viewable area?

      Seriously, how much freedom of movement does an orbiting telescope have? Unless the laws of gravity have changed since I took high school physics, an orbiting object cannot just stand up and walk over to whatever area it wants to be in.

      • Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)

        by mlyle ( 148697 )
        No, but it naturally circles the earth every 96 minutes or so, so there's no large portion of the sky which is continually in eclipse.

        However, the price-performance of an antarctic scope is astounding, and in some ways the absolute performance could considerably surpass Hubble. So I'm all for an antarctic telescope.
        • I hardly consider orbiting the Earth at a set rate "freedom of movement".
          • I hardly consider orbiting the Earth at a set rate "freedom of movement".

            No, but it sure does render the issue moot. An orbiting telescope need only "freedom of movement" along a single axis in order to have complete coverage of the entirity of space. A 90-odd minute orbit creates the need for patience and planning, but any decent reasearch should have plenty of those anyway.

            • I think the fact that there is more than enough space in either direction to study, along with the fact that a second land based telescope could also be built in another area and still cost less than a space based scope, rendered the issue moot some time ago.

              I was not complaining that the Hubble could not see some areas of the sky, rather I was correcting a statement that seemed to suggest the Hubble could just fly around space at the push of a button.

      • Hubble can't change its orbit, but it can point in different directions. Also, if a star you want to look at isn't visible immediately, just wait 45 minutes, and you'll be on the other side of the earth, and probably able to see it.
        • And one couldn't build an Earth based telescope that can point in different directions?

          As for the "It can't see portions of the sky" argument; aside from my earlier objection that what is left is not exactly a small area to look at, couldn't one build another somewhere in Greenland or Alaska? The total cost (assuming the Northern telescope could be built for around the same amount) would still be a fraction of the cost as the Hubble, and would still be much easier to maintain.

  • Now that we got rid of that pesky ozone (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It really is as good as being in space!

  • You Mean Dome C? (Score:5, Informative)

    by BSDevil ( 301159 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:13PM (#10292217) Journal
    See more about this site (and the AASTINO, the Little Telescope That Could) at Wednesday's Story [slashdot.org]

  • Outperform? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `l3gnaerif'> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:14PM (#10292226) Homepage
    MAYBE it would outperform an orbital telescope... but th available sky to look at would be pretty limited, no? Being based in Antartic and all... I doubt too it would be easy to maintain in the winter, where there is NO light for 6 months, at minus 60 something Celcius...

    And comparing a 16m telescope to a 2.4m one is not exactly comparing apples to apples either...

    • Re:Outperform? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TykeClone ( 668449 ) <TykeClone@gmail.com> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:19PM (#10292250) Homepage Journal
      Isn't "no light" what you want for looking through a telescope?

    • Re:Outperform? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Explo ( 132216 )
      Yep, while Hubble definitely has limits where it can point at given time (not too close to the Sun etc), this thing would see only half of the sky at all.

      Also, for half of the year, when the sun does not set at the pole area, this thing would be able to do very little...

      That being said, if someone wishes to build it, I don't think it as useless idea; I just don't see it as a direct 1:1 replacement for a space-based telescope either.
    • "I doubt too it would be easy to maintain in the winter, where there is NO light for 6 months, at minus 60 something Celcius..."

      In case you aren't aware, the temperature in space where the Hubble sits is colder than -200 Celsius.

      • In case you aren't aware, the temperature in space where the Hubble sits is colder than -200 Celsius.

        In case you weren't aware, the temperature in space where the Hubble is not cold, nor is it hot, or even warm. Space is essentially a vacuum, and therefore has no temperature.

        The temperature of Hubble is determined soley by how much it aborbs or radiates energy, since it's actually practically perfectly insulated by the vacuum. It has nothing to do with the temperature of its environment.

        In fact, th

    • "but th available sky to look at would be pretty limited, no? Being based in Antartic and all..."

      Half the universe (ok, probably less than that) is a pretty big area to study. And I'm sure there would be benefits to having it in a set place as well. You wouldn't have to wait for the damn thing to move into the position you want it in.

      "I doubt too it would be easy to maintain in the winter, where there is NO light for 6 months, at minus 60 something Celcius..."

      Are you somehow under the impression tha

  • How old is the hubble ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ThomasFlip ( 669988 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:17PM (#10292241)
    The new telescope would be utilizing the technology of today as opposed to over 10 years ago. Now I think its safe to say that deep space observational technology doesn't grow at the pace of say microchips, but I don't think its much of a suprise that new terrestrial based technology can outperform hubble. I think the real question we should be asking is: antarctic telescope vs NEW orbital telescope. Also, why haven't scientists thought of going to the poles earlier ?
    • While it is highly likely that a new space telescope would give results superior to this proposed telescope the real question is "at what cost?" Like it or not, science always has been and always will be (at least for the forseeable future) limited by the cost of the project.

      A new space telescope would be awesome to have, but if we can build something almost as good for say a quarter of the cost (probably less then that), and where the maintenance (even crossing the harsh tundra etc) is cheap in compa
    • It's not just that newer terrestrial technology can beat older orbital technology. It's that any time you update terrestrial technology, you can go update the thing, whereas the Hubble and its successors only get a major refresh every decade or so. So maybe a new Hubble replacement could be better than a new Antarctic telescope, but five years from now, the ground-based system will have 10 times as much computer horsepower just from normal Moore's law effects, plus it'll be able to take advantage of new

  • Some limitations: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Blackeagle_Falcon ( 784253 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:18PM (#10292245)
    Not only are you limited to the southern sky, but you can't use it for months at a time (during the S. hemisphere summer). Compare that to Hubble which gets a look at the entire sky as it orbits the earth, and can operate 24/7.

    • Re:Some limitations: (Score:5, Informative)

      by Michael Ashley ( 812193 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:29PM (#10292301)

      When the sun is up (summertime) you can observe in the infrared and submillimeter. Hubble's observing efficiency is about 50% due to the requirement to avoid the Earth, the South Atlantic Anomaly, slew time, etc.

      The limitation is sky coverage is not important for many astronomical programs. Important regions such as the Galactic Center, the Magellanic Clouds, and the South Galactic Pole, are all visible.

      • Re:Some limitations: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Threni ( 635302 )
        > requirement to avoid ... the South Atlantic Anomaly

        Thanks for that - I just looked it up and learned something. I especially liked:

        > astronauts are also affected by this region which is said to be the cause of
        > peculiar 'shooting stars' seen in the visual field of astronauts.

        from http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q525.html

    • Re:Some limitations: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:38PM (#10292351)
      There are tradeoffs.

      Hubble is unable to look at most patches of sky for a full day because it orbits near the earth, whereas this telescope can sit and look at most anything in the southern sky for months at a time.

      Hubble is also unable to look at that part of the sky which is near the sun. (Obviously this varies with the season).

      Most of the observing done with Hubble is not really time critical... having two identical Hubbles that could only operate during six months of the year would be almost as good as having the actual Hubble which operates year round. Since this telescope is so much less expensive than Hubble, you could easily build two of it if its observing time is really that important.

      Hubble is more versatile than this Antarcic telescope would be, but I'd say it's due more to atmospheric absorption. There are differences in observing constraints, but it's just not a huge deal.

    • Re:Some limitations: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Space based telescopes might be better, but this is cheaper. If a number of "cheap", earth-based telescopes can be used for, say, 80% of the observations scientists want, then the top of the line space telescopes can be used exclusively for the most demanding observations. .m
    • I'd imagine there'd also still be issues with the atmosphere blocking or scattering interesting wavelengths. For example, one of the more interesting bands Hubble can observe in is the near-ultraviolet. Unfortunately, this range of the spectrum is unobservable from the ground due to atmospheric scattering. Incidentally, this is also a frequency range that the JWST can't detect in, despite it being billed as a replacement for the Hubble.
    • This one's in Antarctica because Australians have the silly idea that it's closer to them. Building in the Arctic gets you the other half of the year.

      And the cost of building two of these things is much less than twice the cost of building a single one, because a large fraction of the cost is developing all the tools and technology to build it, and they can crank out two or three more for not much extra cost. (Obviously building the base and staffing it are duplicated costs.) By contrast, building all t

      • There's mo site in the Arctic that's even nearly as good. You need stability, altitude, extreme cold, very still air at all levels... The Arctic proper is most sea ice, which is at low altitude and not a stable platform. There might be somewhere halfway decent in Greenland, but I haven't heard of it.

    • actually, you might be surprised to know that the Hubble has very roughly the same operating restrictions as a ground-based telescope. It really can't look at the whole sky, because it needs to avoid the sun, earth, moon, and other bright things. For half of its 90 minute orbit, it is pointed in the wrong direction, so it cannot observe. And it passes through radation areas periodically, which causes tons of errors, so it does not observe.

  • It would NOT out-perform Hubble (Score:3, Informative)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:19PM (#10292249) Homepage
    The scientist is even quoted as saying so ... FTFA:

    "... It's nearly as good as being in space."

    Nearly as good, perhaps, but while you may have minimized light pollution by using the Antartic you still have the atmosphere diffusing incoming light. It's like a being a photojournalist with a sheet of fine tissue paper over your lens.

    Built it on top of K2 or some other super-high peak if you want to keep it on earth, and only image things that are relatively perpindicular to minimize atmospheric distortion.

    • Re:It would NOT out-perform Hubble (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      a) the atmosphere is thiner and dryer over antarctica

      b) There are mountains there too
    • Nearly as good, perhaps, but while you may have minimized light pollution by using the Antartic you still have the atmosphere diffusing incoming light.

      Wouldn't the other problem be the southern lights?

    • For crying out loud (Score:3, Informative)

      by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) *
      Perhaps the scientists (you know, the people who know ALL ABOUT how to get the best use from a telescope, the same people who designed it!) might just have taken that into account ?

      The main constituent of atmospheric aberration is turbulence within the atmosphere. The atmosphere over the Antarctic is the thinnest in the world, it has far less turbulence because it's damn cold (heat = energy = motion of the gas), not to mention any massive heat 'spires' from human pollution.

      You can use adaptive optics to c
    • What about the hole in the Ozone Layer? Would that mitigate some of the problems? (at least make it more effective than an earth based telescope elsewhere)

      As long as they don't build it on top of any giant pyramids, they should be ok...
    • "... It's nearly as good as being in space."

      Yes, it would be better to have a 16m telescope in space, but Hubble is only 2.4m.

  • Been done before... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by YorgleLlama ( 814842 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:34PM (#10292326)
    I was working on the software side of the Spirex-Abu telescope at CARA... which no longer exists, as far as I know. (Spirex: South Pole InfraRed EXplorer, Abu was just the name of the IR CCD device.) http://pipe.cis.rit.edu [rit.edu]

    It was meant for doing Infrared astronomy, using an experimental IR sensor. (some pics on that link)

    The thought was that due to the fact that it's so dry an cold down there, you could do IR astronomy similarly to an IR telescope in space. Results were pretty good too.

    All observations were done over the Antarctic Winter, while the airport was colosed, since the sky was colder and there was less water vapor in the sky... and as you know, the less water vapor, the better the IR imaging capability, and the colder, the less background noise.

    This function will be taken up by the new SOFIA platform, which we're also working on as well right now. I believe there have been /. articles about it, but in case you forgot, it's a 2.5m telescope in the back of a modified 747... also meant for IR astronomy.(at 40,000 feet up, you're above most of the water vapor in the air) SOFIA can be reconfigured after each landing.

  • Direction? (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvanED ( 569694 ) <{evaned} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:41PM (#10292357)
    What about taking a picture of something in the northern sky? The Hubble can swing around and take a picture of nearly everything, at least "AFAI can reason", but one mounted at the South Pole would only be able to take a picture of the southern sky. I mean, plenty of stuff going on down there, but seems like most of the research has been in the north.

    (Which has it's ups and downs... more likely to discover something new, but can't follow up observations made up north.)
  • Anybody checked out last weeks userfriendly? (www.userfriendly.org)

    Now I know what the UF crew was really doing in Antartica!

  • Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Insightful)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @04:46PM (#10292383) Journal
    Go and have a look at some of the images Hubble has become famous for. An instrument in space simply doesn't deal with any atmospheric interference. It doesn't compensate for it - its just not there. You could not capture images such as the Hubble deep fields using an antarctic telescope. Though you could get close I doubt you'd get anything as good as the Eagle Nebula starforming images we've all seen.
  • There are probably some limitations, but every telescope has limitations. I'm not sure what sweep angle range this would have and still be good, I don't expect 180 degrees, the farther from normal (straight up from horizontal ground), I bet the more atmospherics might cause problems.

  • Correction (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jnicholson ( 733344 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:01PM (#10292459) Homepage
    would far outperform the Hubble Space Telescope, and could be built at a tiny fraction of its cost, says a scientist from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney, Australia
    That is not what he said. He said "a telescope there would perform as well as a much larger one anywhere else on Earth. It's nearly as good as being in space."

    This time it isn't the /. editors at fault, though, but the spaceflight now editors.

  • Maybe in theory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeffkjo1 ( 663413 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:08PM (#10292496) Homepage
    Perhaps in theory a big telescope in Antartica is a good idea, but I've read some stories over the years that they get a fair amount of snow yearly that would maybe interfere with an exposed, outdoor telescope.
    • Mountain telescopes get snow too - they already know how to handle that. Anyhoo, this won't be the first Antarctic telescope, nor the last. Every Antarctic base probably has at least one - of varying quality.
    • The sites being proposed are far inland and several thousand meters up on the top of the domes of ice that make up the East antartic ice sheet. It hardly ever snows up there. It's too cold and too dry!

    • Re:Maybe in theory (Score:3, Informative)

      by sholden ( 12227 )
      It's a desert. The polar plateau gets gets less than an inch (water equivalent - 3 inches of snow) of snow fall a year.

      Of course you gets lots of "snow sideways" - the wind blows the snow on the ground around which would have the same result telescope wise. And hence my pedantry is completely pointless.

  • Pros and cons (Score:5, Informative)

    by Michael Woodhams ( 112247 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:16PM (#10292535) Journal
    I'm an ex-astronomer, so I'll comment on this.

    The optical arangement is unlike any I've seen before or heard of. I don't have the expertise or the information to comment on whether it will really work. I'll just comment that making optically flat mirrors was very hard (much harder than the normal curved mirrors) last time I heard, but there might be new technology to help here.

    There are basically three competing locations: space, Antarctica, somewhere else on Earth. There is an order of magnitude or more in accessibility and cost between each option.

    Space:
    Pro:
    Access to the full range of wavelengths - no atmospheric absorption or emission. (Particularly useful in UV and IR.)
    No atmospheric bluring - diffraction limited resolution at all wavelengths
    Can observe almost any part of the sky at any time.
    Con:
    Hugely expensive
    Very inaccessible - service missions are either impossible or cost hundreds of millions or more
    Size limitations on launch - either the telescope is smallish (Hubble) or needs even more expense to 'unfold' in orbit (new generation space telescope).
    Very hostile environment: cold on one side, hot on another, radiation belts, ...

    Antarctica:
    Pro:
    Access to wavelengths difficult or impossible to access elsewhere on Earth (mostly mid to far IR. The ozone hole presumably helps out in UV also.)
    Best seeing on the planet: very little atmospheric blur much of the time.
    Con:
    Can only ever view half the sky
    Unusable during summer
    Very expensive
    Poor accesibility: Only during summer, only at great expense.
    Hostile environment: extreme cold. Possible build up of ice by sublimation deposition.

    Anywhere else:
    Pro:
    Cheapest
    Daily access, can drive a truck up to the telescope
    Can have astronomers on site, e.g. debugging new detectors
    Can see the northern hemisphere
    Con:
    Poor seeing
    Many interesting wavelengths inaccessible or hard to observe
    Unusable during the day

    We need all three - space for what we can't do on Earth, Antarctica for what we can't do elsewhere (except space, which costs more). Whether the telescope described (very briefly...) in the article is sensible I couldn't say, nor could I say whether it makes sense to use Dome C rather than the more accessible, and manned, south pole base.
  • The first article Slashdot posted about Dome C was more informative....

    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09 /1 5/1953249&tid=160&tid=134&tid=126&tid= 14

  • ESO's big telescope already in operation... (Score:4, Informative)

    by SeniorDingDong ( 111782 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @05:20PM (#10292554)
    The VLT and in particular VLTI http://www.eso.org/ [eso.org] (I for interferometry) have been up and running for a while. In fact here's a quote about adaptive optics from 2001
    Normally, the achievable image sharpness of a ground-based telescope is limited by the effect of atmospheric turbulence. However, with the Adaptive Optics (AO) technique, this drawback can be overcome and the telescope produces images that are at the theoretical limit, i.e., as sharp as if it were in space.

    The site at Paranal have 4 8.5 meter telescopes and interferometry can can equate their imaging to the distance they stand apart.
  • How are you ever going to convince the American Public that there are stars down there to look at - aren't all the stars up here???
  • Am I missing something, or do I recall everyone sitting down and deciding not to develop Antartica?

    Sure, there have been exceptions made for scientific research _directly_ about Antartica. However, this has _nothing_ to do with Antartica at all! I'm sure there are quite a few other bits of scientific research that would benefit from the lack of population, nearby radio and thermal interference, and the like.

    However, we don't see these things being built there either. Simply because something is scienti

    • Re:Antartica is a nature preserve! KEEP OUT! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by stealth.c ( 724419 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @06:04PM (#10292815)
      They can point the telescope at polar bears once in a while, if that would be OK.

      I'm surprised that you care so much about Antarctica. I'm all for responsibly maintaining the Earth, but I can't find a good reason to object to building one measley telescope. Especially if it will have such a great impact on astronomy.

      Do you object solely on the principle that it was decreed to be a nature preserve, or is there a deeper conviction? Do you believe that a telescope would have a negative effect on the Antarctic environment?

    • Re:Antartica is a nature preserve! KEEP OUT! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by boutell ( 5367 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @06:18PM (#10292904) Homepage
      You are missing something. The Antarctic treaty [nsf.gov] encourages scientific research activities in Antarctica. There is not a single word in that treaty that even momentarily suggests that it would be an awful thing if the research was not expressly about Antarctica itself.

      The later Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, [antarctica.ac.uk] established in 1991, goes into more detail about Antarctica's status as a nature preserve, "dedicated to peace and science." It specifically bans mining and similar activities, and makes clear that all activities in Antarctica must be compatible with scientific research and environmental research in particular.

      But it definitely does not ban non-scientific activities, like tourism, as long as their environmental impact is addresses correctly. And it certainly doesn't ban astronomy (an awful, polluting activity, astronomy! Shudder!).
  • I can just imagine the size of the gyros and retros we will need to rotate the planet so that this Antarctic telescope can view something interesting from the northern hemisphere.

    --
    What am I on?? I'm on poverty, it's like
    life but with less money.
  • At least there is no danger of a "mistake" at the mirror grinding factory causing a "myopia" in the telescope, because I think the Pentagon knows that it can't spy on Earth from Antarctica. However, there is some danger, in having mirrors exposed like that, to crazy Swedes shooting at dogs. Hopefully, MacReady got the damn Thing.
  • "But, unlike them, this telescope would also be a great survey instrument, able to map the whole sky with Hubble-like clarity."
    This is far south enough that some of the northern sky will always be obscured by the earth.

  • Some comments (Score:4, Informative)

    by mbrother ( 739193 ) <mbrother.uwyo@edu> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:32PM (#10294623) Homepage
    A couple of people have mentioned that you can't work in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum without going to space. True, and critically important to some science. Also, from Antarctica, you can only see the southern sky, not the north, so this is another limitation.

    These are not good reasons not to build this proposed telescope, just ways in which Hubble is still uniquely qualified.

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