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100 Meter OWL Telescope Project
Posted by
michael
on Sat Aug 04, 2001 04:01 AM
from the they-do-it-with-mirrors dept.
from the they-do-it-with-mirrors dept.
mindpixel writes: "The European South Observatory (my employer) is getting VERY serious about building the OWL (OverWhelmingly Large) 100 meter telescope. Check out this new site dedicated to the project. You can see some cool diagrams of what the OWL telescope will look like and some simulated images here." For more about telescopes of unusual size, you might read McKinstry's interview last year.
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When point sources aren't points any more (Score:2)
complaint from the cleaning staff... (Score:2, Funny)
Do these maniacs have any appreciation for how much Windex and how many paper towels they're talking about?
sweet... (Score:2, Informative)
Keanu says "Whoa!" (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope. Un uh, sorry, these bad boys are talking about one solid 100-meter MIRROR with a telescope assembly that would just fit under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and stand almost 3/4 as tall.
To put that in perspective, once the thing's built, you would have a good chance of seeing it on the horizon with your naked eye from 15-20 miles away (a rough guess, I know).
You know that gargantuan telescope Marvin the Martian had in the Bugs Bunny cartoons? The OWL makes it look like a Cracker Jack prize.
John Hill, arizona's mirror god (Score:1)
Nomenclature... crazy. (Score:3, Funny)
Somebody had to say it... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Why more ground based telescopes? (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Why more ground based telescopes? (Score:5, Insightful)
What are the benefits of having an Earth-bound, optical telescope? Or rather, what can a larger optical telescope find better from Earth that we can't already find on other wavelengths and from other venues (i.e. The Hubble)?
If there are no advantages here, is it more cost-effective, or what?
Chris: What you should actually ask is what advantage does a space based telescope have over a ground based telescope? The only thing you gain from being in space for an optical telescope is better image quality due to lack of atmospheric turbulence. By for every other measure (maintenance, support, materials, etc.) being in space is much, much more expensive and limited. Which is why the Hubble and it's 2.4 meter primary cost a number of times more than the projected cost of of the 100 meter OWL. Recent advances in computer technology (adaptive and active optics) have greatly reduced the advantage that being in space provides at optical wavelengths. For some non-optical telescopes (x-ray, IR, gamma ray) there will always be an advantage to being in orbit.
Unnumbered (Score:2)
So this means.. (Score:1)
Err... (Score:2, Interesting)
On a more serious note, why are we still building telescopes on Earth with the limitations we face on the ground? (Atmospheric distortion comes to mind... And I do understand they'll probably build this thing in a remote area to avoid the obvious: smog, city lights, etc. Still, though, there are some inherent limitations that they give a telescope like this by building it on and designing it for Earth.)
It would seem much more logical to put this money toward a space based (a la Hubble, but much more advanced) telescope. (Yes, I know they're sometimes expensive and slow, but...) This way, it would seem, our returned photographs would be of optimal quality.
Just a thought.
Re:Err... (Score:5, Insightful)
Future Surveys will be electronic (Score:4, Informative)
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey [sdss.org] is using CCDs to map one quarter of the entire sky, in five passbands. Its main camera uses a mosaic of 30 2048x2048 CCDs to cover an area about 2.5 degrees across (although there are gaps between the chips). Other mosaic cameras have even more pixels.
Future ground-based surveys will use electronic detectors, not photographic plates. The increased sensitivity and linearity of electronic detectors, plus their inherent digital output, make them far superior to plates.
Re:It's not OverWhelmingly Large (Score:1)
The text:
ESO is developing a concept of ground-based, 100-m class optical telescope (which we have christened OWL for its keen night vision and for OverWhelmingly Large), with segmented primary and secondary mirrors, integrated active optics and multi-conjugate adaptive optics capabilities. The idea of a 100-m class telescope originated in 1997, when it was assessed that true progress in science performance after HST and the 8-10-m class Keck and VLT generations would require an order of magnitude increase in aperture size (a similar assessment had been made by Matt Mountain in 19961). The challenge and the science potential seemed formidable -and highly stimulating.
Re:who gives a flying fuck? (Score:2)
There is no proof that alien do not exist, either. You can't prove a negative condition. Science and statistics. Gotta love it.
woof.
Re:late hour news (Score:1)
I submitted the story because it was a quiet night here at the observatory and there was nothing much to read on slashdot... I'm glad Michael posted it... I'm also impressed he remembered my interview from last year... he knew mindpixel and McKinstry are the same person, right?