The 5 Most Powerful Telescopes, and 5 That Will Define the Future of Astronomy

[iceman]

From Popular Mechanics (http://www.origin.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4299775.html):



Full article:
http://www.origin.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4299775.html

[Bloodbean]

Excellent read thanks Mike! :)

Troy

[renormalised]

Very interesting article about the telescopes...but there were even more interesting articles with links from the telescope article, mostly concerning NASA.


Seems to be a lot of discontent within NASA about the Ares/Orion program...a lot of intransigence amongst its top brass, and I have a feeling it's not only with this program either. It's probably high time someone went through NASA with a good stiff broom and some of these top brass and middle management were removed. It seems to me that there's been a bit (a lot) of "Empire Building" going on within NASA and these little fiefdoms need taking down. Although, one thing NASA needs badly and that's a large injection of cash funds. Quite frankly, they could do with double their present budget and it wouldn't even cause a wrinkle in the US economy.

Now, back to the telescopes....I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the Kepler Mission. It will be interesting, either way, to see what happens. However a negative result won't mean the planets like Earth are necessarily rare. It'll just mean that this particular mission didn't find any using the techniques they decided to run with. What a pity they decided that the OWL was too hard and expensive to build. Can you imagine a 100m mirror. Monumental doesn't even begin to cover it...especially for an Earthbound telescope.

[venus]

Interesting article Mike...
hardly worth criticizing NASA I thought renormalised

[astroron]

I found the article more notable for what observatories it left out, such as the ESO VLT and the yet to be decided SKA which Australia hopes to have a big stake in.
Otherwise a good article.

[renormalised]

Read the other articles about NASA on the page....you'll understand why I criticised them the way I did.

[KenGee]

Ron called it right, the US does tend to have a "If it wasn't done by us, then it doesn't count". The VLT gets better res then Hubble. My Wife got me a great book a few weeks ago, Observatories of the world. I love reading about the toys the big boys play with.