Small Telescopes Make Big Discoveries 37
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Hakeem Oluseyi, an astronomer at the Florida Institute of Technology and president of the African Astronomical Society, says his goal is to put one research telescope in every country, starting with African and Southern Hemisphere nations because there is now an amazing opportunity for small telescopes to discover and characterize new planetary systems, as well as measure the structure of the Milky Way. 'Astronomers are no longer looking at high-definition pictures but at HD movies, scanning for objects that change and for transient ones,' says Oluseyi. 'A 4-inch telescope was used to discover the first exoplanet by the transit method, where you watch the brightness vary.' Small telescopes capable to doing real science are a lot cheaper than people think. A 1-meter telescope costs $300,000 but reduce the size by 60 percent, and it falls to just $30,000. For example the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) uses hardware costing less than $75,000 to look at millions of very bright stars at once, over broad sections of sky, and at low resolution to see if the starlight dims just a little — an indication that a planet has crossed in front of the star. The KELT team has already discovered the existence of a very unusual faraway planet — KELT-1b, a super hot, super dense ball of metallic hydrogen so massive that it may better be described as a 'failed star' and located so close to its star that it whips through an entire 'yearly' orbit in a little over a day."
Link to Firefox update? (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Not even trying?
... and the goal is ? (Score:2)
... his goal is to put one research telescope in every country, starting with African and Southern Hemisphere nations because there is now an amazing opportunity for small telescopes to discover and characterize new planetary systems, as well as measure the structure of the Milky Way...
Before human successfully put telescope into space, we did rely on telescope at the bottom of this gravity well to map out the stars in the heaven.
Now that we have telescopes, are sending more and more more advance telescopes orbiting out there I hope someone can put some sense on that guy that we should instead encourage the future generations to design much more advance telescopes that we can put outside the Earth atmosphere so to explore more of the heavenly scenes.
Re:... and the goal is ? (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as I understand it, the primary reason to send telescopes into space is because the atmosphere is opaque to certain wavelengths. There's also distortions caused by the atmosphere for other wavelengths, but we've found number crunching techniques that are cheaper than sending them out into space because on the ground we can build ridiculously sized telescopes like the 2800 ton E-ELT [wikipedia.org].
Re:... and the goal is ? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually we are using number crunching to improve images. The air waves and wiggle kind of like the light you see at the bottom of a pool (it actually different because the atmosphere's upper boundary isn't the source of the moving refraction, but the effect is pretty much the same. It makes it hard to get a clear image especially if you average the image out over long exposures. The mirrors on modern terrestrial telescopes have thin mirrors and actuators that deform the mirror. So they slightly deform the mirror to accommodate the fluctuations in the atmosphere so the two cancel out. They way they measure the atmosphere, is by shooting a laser straight out from the telescope to create an artificial star upon which to focus.
Yes computers are used to analyze the image to control the deformation, but its the shifting mirror that fixes the unfocussed image.
Re:...and ground based is better now (Score:3, Informative)
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I'm going for a further informative note here, noting exactly how this compensation is done.
It's entirely true that modern telescopes have the ability to compensate for most of the atmospheric effects, and this is why there are major efforts in building larger telescopes, such as the E-ELT. But for certain wavelengths, the atmosphere is almost completely opaque, making ground observations ineffective, and requiring the use of satellites for these observations. Also, light pollution is also a major problem t
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You're right. You can compensate for atmospheric distortion of visible light with number-crunching and adaptive optics techniques. But there's no way that a X-ray or far-infrared telescope on the ground is going to be as good as one in space.
There's a secondary reason for radio telescopes (which see through the atmosphere just fine). If you have two radio dishes 1,000 km apart, you can use them to make an image with the same resolution as if you had a single dish 1,000 km in diameter. If you put one of
Is this the link? (Score:2)
Like my girlfriend says... (Score:1)
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I here they have an Enzyte for that.
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Girth, not length, is the important factor.
Same goes for telescopes!
Why not just the best observing sites? (Score:3)
starting with African and Southern Hemisphere nations because there is now an amazing opportunity for small telescopes to discover and characterize new planetary systems
One has nothing to do with the other.
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The point isn't finding better sites (Score:3)
stop wasting precious funding on ideological bs. (Score:1)
Science , specifically astronomy / astrophysics has nothing whatever to do with 'helping poorer nations'. Funds for astro research are scarce enough without wasting it on political crusades. What we need is most scopes at best locations. If those locations _happen_ to be in 'poorer nations' - fine, but putting ground level optics in equatorial Africa is a waste of money ( no infrastructure, more heat noise & thicker atmosphere than nearly anywhere else) and investing in _any_ projects in Nigeria -
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Science , specifically astronomy / astrophysics has nothing whatever to do with 'helping poorer nations'.
What a myopic viewpoint, dismissing huge portions of the world's population and their potential future contributions to science, which can only be realized if cultivated. The whole point of these telescopes is that they are inexpensive. It's not worth spending a small amount now for potential increased pool of scientists to choose from later? Are you also against science advocacy and promoting science education and careers here in the states, and think that should instead all be spent on new equipment fo
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It's true that the northern hemisphere had the majority important telescopes... several decades ago. Actually, interest in installing telescopes to study the southern sky began as early as 1820, when Great Britain founded the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, the first scientific institution in Africa. Following a few mergers and changes, the South African Astronomical Observatory was established in 1972, now operating one of the largest telescopes in the world - a 9.2 meter reflector telescope, t
Re:Why not just the best observing sites? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) searching for exoplanets is hot at the moment, it's a selling point.
2) these smallish telescopes are in the price range of poorer nations - not of the people maybe but certainly in range of the budgets of educational institutions or local governments wanting to please their constituents.
3) the nations mentioned are poor, can't afford expensive stuff, and this may spark off general scientific interest amongst their people.
4) it doesn't make sense promoting it to rich countries, because they'll consider it "too cheap" or "not good enough" or whatever.
So yes, one does have to do with another. Whether a lot of new discoveries will come out of them remains to be seen but with more eyes pointing towards the sky, the overall chance of making discoveries is definitely increasing.
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For obvious reasons most of the telescopes would be situated in rural areas.
Not so obvious to put them in rural areas.
Putting them in urban areas has issues with light pollution, but has the advantage of a potentially much larger audience.
Depends on whether you want to use this primarily as research tool, or demonstration tool. Both are important. The vast majority of people is not really interested in staying up late at night looking at tiny little lights in the sky; the tiny minority that is interested can definitely use something like this to kindle that interest. From a city yo
I'll say it... (Score:2)
It's not the size of the Telescope but how you use it...
- or -
It's not the size of the Telescope but the magic in it...
Re:I'll say it... (Score:4, Insightful)
diameter is more important than length
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In fact unless you are using a folded optical design, shorter is often better (assuming you can maintain optical quality). The shortness of a telescope is measured by its focal ratio, with the lower the ratio the shorter the telescope. Galileo's telescope was F/12, and many of 17th and 18th centuries were F/60. The Mt. Palomar telescope is F/3.8, the Keck Telescope is F/1.75, KELT is F/1.8.
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interesting! although I expect field of view to be consideration too.
also it could be I might have been joking about something other than telescopes.
TRAPPIST @ ESO (Score:2)
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Cheers! [wikipedia.org]
Not just research telescopes (Score:4, Insightful)
Mr. Olusevi shouldn't limit himself to just $30,000 research telescopes. He should also be trying to get $300 telescopes in backyards all over Africa.
[1] Plummer, Alan. Atlas' Apprentices: Amateur Contributions in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Broadbans may be just as useful (Score:2)
Sensors and computers (Score:1)