Construction Begins On $1 Billion Telescope That Will Take Pictures 10 Times Sharper Than Hubble's (qz.com) 97
The $1 billion Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile is officially under construction with a scheduled date of operation in 2024. The telescope "will have an array of seven enormous mirrors totaling 80 feet in diameter, giving it 10 times the precision of the Hubble telescope," reports Quartz. "Among its advances is technology to help it correct for the distorting effect of Earth's atmosphere by using software to make hundreds of adjustments per second to its array of secondary mirrors." From the report: The project's architects, a consortium of universities and institutions in the U.S., Korea, and Australia, chose to build in Chile's Atacama desert for its clear, dry skies. Astronomers will use the Magellan Telescope to study the origins of elements and the birth of stars and galaxies, and to examine planets that have been identified as potentially harboring life. Mother Nature Network has an article highlighting nine of the largest new telescopes expected to begin operation in the next decade.
Translation for scientists (Score:5, Informative)
80 feet = 24 meter
really slashdot, SI units have been published in 1960.
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Quartz, not Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a quote from what would have been converted from Metric by the editor at Quartz magazine.
Here's another humdinger from the same article: "Instead, it will orbit the Sun, at a distance 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, three times farther from us than Hubble."
I suspect they're out by a factor of 1000 on Hubble's orbit there.
Re: Quartz, not Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
The bit you're missing is the telescope orbits the Sun but stays close to Earth. On one side the orbit is slightly high (0 deg), on the other it is slightly low (180 deg), 90 degrees around the orbit it is slightly fast, and at 270 it is slightly slow. The net result is it appears to circle the L2 point and stays out of the Earth's shadow.
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Here's another humdinger from the same article: "Instead, it will orbit the Sun, at a distance 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, three times farther from us than Hubble."
No wonder it's been warmer lately!
Re:Translation for scientists (Score:4, Informative)
really slashdot, SI units have been published in 1960.
Oh relax, it's not like this is a story about science being done in a country which adopted SI units.
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Yet another anti American metric flame on Slashdot. Do you people ever get bored?
Do you people ever adopt the metric system?
Feels good to bash us, doesn't it?
Yes especially about stupid shit like not adopting the metric system.
And the world wonders why we're withdrawing and tending to our own affairs.
No we don't. We actively mock you for that too. The only thing we wonder about is why you are withdrawing from the very institutions you created.
How about, "wow, America, this new telescope will be great for science!" Nope, just grab the first negative thing you can think of.
Well to be fair you expect us to talk about science while shunning scientific units. Its like me typeing this post while pretending to be an english major.
Well I suppose we deserve it, with the invading of Iraq and the bombing a school bus in Yemen.
Not for those reasons you don't. Those reasons should bring a whole different type of ridicule and a
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The metric system is worse, so we don't adopt it.
Oh, it was great in its time, when there were no electronic calculators and so powers of ten made things easy, but that time has passed, and we're free to return to units that make sense for everyday use.
Of course, the best system is the Furlong-Firkin-Fortnight system, aka the FU system. But adoption of a system that brilliant will be slow, as the world just isn't smart enough to use it yet.
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The metric system is worse, so we don't adopt it.
+5 Funny.
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We're withdrawing from the institutions we created because of decades of negative feedback from people just like you.
Errrr no. Actually America doesn't get much negative feedback at all for the institutions it created and the rest of the world jumped to participate in. Right now the only abuse America is getting is precisely for abandoning those institutions.
And the rest of your comment is nonsense given the stupid premise of your post.
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Rogue superpower, world police, global tyrant disregarding the UN isn't institutions that the US created. It is precisely the shit we are giving the US for doing. However your timescale is especially silly given the wide level of support the previous administration had internationally.
All we hear on the ground is what racist, sexist, transphobic monsters we are.
Maybe it's time to switch off Fox and Friends.
And fat, don't forget fat-shaming.
Why is that relevant? Fat people get shamed all over the world. You're not special in that regard.
Please tell us where we overweight, bigoted shitheads are hailed as saviors. Did you know we rape 1 out of every 4 women who enter our university system?
Oh I see now. You're getting America confused with Americans. Don't do that. Frank
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Worked incredibly well? You mean in Iraq? In Libya? In Yemen? In Syria? You joking?
No but I am speaking overarchingly while you are looking for specific things that went poorly.
The world has been loudly demanding an end to American bullying and domination.
Yes it has. Incidentally America does more in the world than just fuck up a few middle eastern nations. And incidentally the things America has stepped away from aren't the ones anyone has complained about.
Now you should start reading the thread again from the top. You'll reliase we've gone full 180degrees and I am defending your country while you are attacking yourself. This has been quite interesting.
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and tell us all that America was actually a force for good
If you generalise our discussion to this statement then your problem is reading comprehension and not the actions of your country.
So the whole time you weren't serious. Typical.
Nope, I am very serious. However if you keep changing the scope of discussions then I really can't help you.
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Meanwhile, the nation "tending to our own affairs" is threatening multiple nations with war unless they do as they are told
What is the color of your sky?
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Translation for scientists
80 feet = 24 meter
Yes, I'm sure all of the "scientists" who are unable to do their own imperial->metric conversion are thanking you right now. In fact, I hope they all reply to you with a thank you post, including their real names, so that I can give their future research publications the attention it deserves.
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"Translation for double-amputee scientists"
fixed it for you
Re:Translation for scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually not. :)
For many people living in the US maybe. But slashdot is read by an international audience. :)
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Eh? There is a world outside of America? Amazing. I, and most Americans, were pretty sure that we were the center of the universe. Who knew? ;)
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Come on, it will be put in space by SpaceX. They'll drive it up the HypeLoop on a Tesla Model 4's with the Space Launcher mode.
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There will be one mirror in the center and 6 around it, forming something quite round, so total diameter is quite close to the collecting-area-equivalent diameter. 80/7? Too much programming led to only one meaning of the word "array" in your head. Take a break.
Re:Total diameter?? (Score:5, Informative)
Total diameter has much to do with the angular resolution, that is, how small a thing you can see.
The area has to do with how much light you gather.
The quality of the image has to do with the quality of the optics - physical and adaptive.
A modern telescope is a complex machine and employs a bunch of tricks to get those pretty pictures on APOD.
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Each of the seven mirrors has a diameter of 8.4 m, together that amounts to equivalent to a 24.5 m. mirror but with the added advantage you can now adjust the segments to counteract atmospheric turbulence.
The biggest advantage is it is easier to manufacture a smaller mirror to the required accuracy.
It's not about surface area. (Score:3)
The measurement from the left edge to right edge determines the resolution - even if there are gaps. Telescopes for longer wavelengths often have gaps of several meters, I order to stretch out each dimension. Have a look at thr VLA - it's shaped like a Y, with nothing over most of the surface area.
While the max dimension edge-to-edge determines the resolution, the surface area determines the minimum brightness of objects the telescope can see. That is, how faint/weak something can be and still be detected
Finally... (Score:2)
Will be small compared to ESO's ELT (Score:5, Informative)
For details on the ELT, see https://www.eso.org/public/uni... [eso.org]
Will be interesting to see which one will actually start taking pictures of higher quality, first.
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Not just that, but even if they start building tomorrow the relevant space telescope to compare it with would presumably be the James Webb rather than the 28 year old Hubble... Admittedly, with the delays on that thing it may not be launched for another 20 years.
SKA (Score:3)
How's that Square Milometer Array thing [wikipedia.org] coming along?
Re:SKA (Score:5, Informative)
feet ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: feet ? (Score:1)
Who is chris?
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Who is chris?
A connoisseur of fine rice wine?
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Nice ! (Score:5, Informative)
The fun stuff is now the adaptive optics have perfected to a point where the astronomer pretend theoretical optical precision will be atteignable, albeit on a smaller field of view.
Like described here: https://www.eso.org/public/aus... [eso.org]
Radio telescopes are something different.Their images are in the radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum, obviously, and radio waves have a frequency which makes them able to be recorded with their phase and all. So the signal of several antennas can be recombined by computer like with a giant interferometric radio telescope.
Makes for sharper images, like if you had really a square kilometer dish. With holes. But still gives sharp images.
With optical waves you have to physically recombine the light to do interferometry. The frequency of visible light is order of magnitudes higher than radio waves. Thus optical interferometers are rarer and "smaller".
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My bad.
A little bit more explanations in this article: https://www.zmescience.com/sci... [zmescience.com]
About the same pics of Neptune.
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the astronomer pretend theoretical optical precision will be atteignable
I think you mean "claim", rather than "pretend" (which implies they are being misleading). The English "pretend" is a false friend of the French "prétendre".
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Exactly. My bad again. :)
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Are you saying the new/big observatory will be able to Adaptive Optics out (or MFBD out or whatever out) the atmospheric distortion?
Otherwise
Giant Mirrors! (Score:2, Informative)
The biggest telescope mirrors (8metres) all seem to be made at the University of Arizona, at their lab underneath the footballs stadium. Here are a couple of fun videos. Fascinating engineering.
Making the mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope: https://youtu.be/c-lBKuHqHk0
17 Tonnes of Spinning Glass: https://youtu.be/BP9HNVuGb-g
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Fun fact. I was once wandering around the football stadium at the UofA and saw a weird, almost hidden door. It had a sign on it that said Tree Ring society. I was an avid Lord of the Rings fan at the time and misread it as Three Ring Society and I was excited to meet some people who maybe spoke Elvish. A second look dispelled my excitement. *sigh* The naivety of youth. lol
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Re:A billion?? (Score:5, Funny)
A billion for a telescope??
But, think of how many diversity training classes you could hold, with that kind of money?
Think of how many women and Eskimos you could teach to code?
How many "sustainable" things you could, er, sustain with all those external funds??
Priorities, people!!
Boy, you try to speak up for marginalized and underrepresented populations, and what do you get ... modded to oblivion by the shills of the Telescope Industrial Complex.
It's not the size of your telescope, (Score:5, Funny)
it's how you use... No. It's pretty much the size of your telescope.
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People with short telescopes often like boasting about how wide their primary mirrors are.
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it's not how long it is, but how wide it is.
this one is wide...
This time part of the $1 Billion is paying for... (Score:4, Funny)
...Windex, right?
80 foot diameter! (Score:2, Offtopic)
sigh (Score:1)
it's not the DPI, people: it's the filters.
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Yeah, and they took out the headphone jack as well. :P
waste of money (Score:2)