The Extremely Large Telescope Will Transform Astronomy (economist.com) 35
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) under construction in Chile's Atacama Desert will be the world's biggest optical telescope when completed in 2028. With a giant 39.3-meter main mirror and advanced adaptive optics, the ELT will collect far more light and achieve much sharper images than any existing ground-based telescope, revolutionizing the study of exoplanets, black holes, dark matter, and the early universe. Economist adds: But when it comes to detecting the dimmest and most distant objects, there is no substitute for sheer light-gathering size. On that front the ELT looks like being the final word for the foreseeable future. A planned successor, the "Overwhelmingly Large Telescope," would have sported a 100-metre mirror. But it was shelved in the 2000s on grounds of complexity and cost. The Giant Magellan Telescope is currently being built several hundred kilometres south of the elt on land owned by the Carnegie Institution for Science, an American non-profit, and is due to see its first light some time in the 2030s. It will combine seven big mirrors into one giant one with an effective diameter of 25.4 metres. Even so, it will have only around a third the light-gathering capacity of the ELT.
A consortium of scientists from America, Canada, India and Japan, meanwhile, has been trying to build a mega-telescope on Hawaii. The Thirty Meter Telescope would, as its name suggests, be a giant -- though still smaller than the elt. But it is unclear when, or even if, it will be finished. Construction has been halted by arguments about Mauna Kea, the mountain on which it is to be built, which is seen as sacred by some. For the next several decades, it seems, anyone wanting access to the biggest telescope money can buy will have to make their way to northern Chile.
A consortium of scientists from America, Canada, India and Japan, meanwhile, has been trying to build a mega-telescope on Hawaii. The Thirty Meter Telescope would, as its name suggests, be a giant -- though still smaller than the elt. But it is unclear when, or even if, it will be finished. Construction has been halted by arguments about Mauna Kea, the mountain on which it is to be built, which is seen as sacred by some. For the next several decades, it seems, anyone wanting access to the biggest telescope money can buy will have to make their way to northern Chile.
Atmospheric artefacts? (Score:2)
It's a neat achievement, when it's finished, but I'm curious how will atmospheric/light artefacts going to be tackled?
Re:Atmospheric artefacts? (Score:4, Informative)
Adaptive optics [wikipedia.org].
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Thank you!
Re:Atmospheric artefacts? (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, the quaternary active mirror is equipped with 8000 voice-coil actuators correcting every at 1 kHz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not just a clever choice of words (Score:2)
A planned successor, the "Overwhelmingly Large Telescope," would have sported a 100-metre mirror. But it was shelved in the 2000s on grounds of complexity and cost.
That's because it was, uh, overwhelmingly large.
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I guess we are stuck with the Tolerably Large Telescope then.
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A planned successor, the "Overwhelmingly Large Telescope," would have sported a 100-metre mirror. But it was shelved in the 2000s on grounds of complexity and cost.
That's because it was, uh, overwhelmingly large.
We must reconsider, so we can build Dark Helmet's ludicrously large telescope!
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Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1294/ [xkcd.com]
Once again, religion trumps science (Score:3)
"Construction has been halted by arguments about Mauna Kea, the mountain on which it is to be built, which is seen as sacred by some."
Why is it that gods and/or their followers so often seem to be against learning?
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It seems to me that almost every green tree, river side, and hill top in the USA is considered sacred by one tribe or another of the European's predecessors on the continent. It makes sense given the nature of nature worshiping religions those tribes typically practiced, but at some point it feels we've reach the point of absurdity?
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almost every green tree, river side, and hill top in the USA is considered sacred by one tribe or another
Not really. It's like kids and toys. When nobody plays with one, it just lies on the floor, forgotten. But should one child pick it up, the rest will scream "Mine!"
We had a case involving a dry dock needed to cast some concrete bridge pontoons. The state found a suitable site and then jumped through all the hoops with public hearings and notices to find any concerned parties. Nothing. But then when they started to dig, they found coffins with bodies. At least a thousand of them. Turns out it was a burial g
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"Construction has been halted by arguments about Mauna Kea, the mountain on which it is to be built, which is seen as sacred by some."
Why is it that gods and/or their followers so often seem to be against learning?
Some of the "native" Hawaiians are angry that the "haoles" who is anyone not "native" are there at all. The Kill Haole day kind of framed as a joke, although I'm pretty certain if they could get away with it, they would. They do not want Hawaii to be a state, and they want ethnic purity to be blunt.
First, Native Hawaiians aren't any more native than the Japanese or Caucasian people living there.
Second, Mauna Kea being sacred is just a way that they have framed their argument, because of freedom of religi
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"First, Native Hawaiians aren't any more native than the Japanese or Caucasian people living there"
they were there at least 500 years before James Cook "discovered" Hawaii but I guess it doesn't matter because invaders don't give a fuck.
500 / 5000 / 50000 years, big deal, all that matters is they have something we want & can't stop us from taking it
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"First, Native Hawaiians aren't any more native than the Japanese or Caucasian people living there" they were there at least 500 years before James Cook "discovered" Hawaii but I guess it doesn't matter because invaders don't give a fuck. 500 / 5000 / 50000 years, big deal, all that matters is they have something we want & can't stop us from taking it
Figuring out who owns land is a bit difficult at best, impossible very often. First of course, is the concept of property ownership. But we'll assume that some group at present in Hawaii owns it. And the Haole is an invader, with no rights to any of it. Here we go!
Ah - so the first person there and his family own everything forever? Or just him or her? Well, hold on a moment.
Who owns what is called the USA? Because the Native Americans would take over other Native American's lands for their own. The conc
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Native Americans including Mesoamericans often didn't live peacefully but they prospered, migrated, built societies & nations.
The arrival of Europeans destroyed all of that - why didn't that happen in Europe, where conquest & displacement was also rife for just as long?
But while neither of us will be around to see it, China, India & Africa will own "your" land in the not too distant future since they - or their close offshoots - owned it all way back when
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Native Americans including Mesoamericans often didn't live peacefully but they prospered, migrated, built societies & nations.
I don't recall that I ever said anything other than that the Native Americans were not the peace loving people living in total harmony, at one with nature, the people living in a paradise
I'm also not certain that I would make a strong wager that they were the first humans here. The doctrine of who touches a land first owns it in perpetuity requires finding out who those people were. The very least is that we must figure out which tribe it was, than cede the USA and Canada and South America to them.
Now o
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"Construction has been halted by arguments about Mauna Kea, the mountain on which it is to be built, which is seen as sacred by some."
Why is it that gods and/or their followers so often seem to be against learning?
Why is it that colonists often seem unable to respect the native's customs? How would the Brits like it if someone proposed to build a telescope on top of the Stonehenge?
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In this case, I would be proud to be a "colonist." The TMT was planned for a small spot on the side of this huge mountain that has been an agreed-on location for telescopes since 1960, managed by the University of Hawaii, with all construction monitored for environmental standards and avoidance of native relic sites.
The protest is an attempt to use the TMT as a bargaining chip in unrelated native rights disputes with the state, in just the same way as Timmy Tuberville vainly tried to hold up military appoin
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If it's the best site for it, fully excavate and catalogue Stonehenge and move it. Who knows what interesting archeological stuff we'd find in the process and at the end of the day, it's bunch of rocks in a field that went viral.
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I would stick it to the Luddites by giving the TMT project to the Chinese, who are already partners in the project and have a perfect dark-sky site at Shiquanhe on the Tibetan plateau. Unlike the proposed alternative site in the Canary Islands, it is directly comparable to Mauna Kea and not subject to dust from the Sahara. And whereas the European Greens already have an opposition ready to go at the Canaries site, there's nothing they can do to interfere with a project in China. If the Chinese want to build
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"I would stick it to the Luddites by giving the TMT project to the Chinese"
How is that sticking it to them? It doesn't matter to them where it's built so long as it's not on Mauna Kea
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"I would stick it to the Luddites by giving the TMT project to the Chinese"
How is that sticking it to them? It doesn't matter to them where it's built so long as it's not on Mauna Kea
That would be the position of the Hawaiian activists alone, but the larger Green agenda is to deindustrialize humanity by eliminating technological infrastructure, and more recently by attacking basic scientific research instruments like the Large Hadron Collider and TMT. China, whatever our current political disagreements over its military expansionism may be, is at least Luddite-free. It galls the Greens to see China building a big fleet of nuclear power plants, a nationwide network of bullet trains, and
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"larger Green agenda is to deindustrialize humanity by eliminating technological infrastructure"
Nonsense.
"attacking basic scientific research instruments like the Large Hadron Collider"
would have been a lot easier to prevent it from ever being built
"It galls the Greens to see China building a big fleet of nuclear power plants, a nationwide network of bullet trains, and so much residential space that they have actually overshot the current market"
Some of the most prominent people on the side of environmental
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> If the Chinese want to build something, they just fucking build it.
Unfortunately, when the Chinese want to invade a smaller country, they just fucking invade it too.
Apparently, you missed that detail about Tibet.
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So do some other large countries, they just have different reasons for wanting to.
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Tibet has an interesting and complicated relationship with China. Not the same as, but sharing some commonalities with the relationship between Hawaii, the US government and the Dole corporation.
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Because the world needs more holy lands and sacred places, since that's worked so well to bring us peace and love!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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If there were a way for the telescopes to be hidden from view at a distance it would be much better.