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Old 16-11-2007, 04:05 PM
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bojan
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Location: Mt Waverley, VIC
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Bubble space telescope

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dooghan View Post
One problem I can see with it is the sun is going to heat up the tube. That heats up the gas inside the tube and changes the shape of your mirror. Then when the tube goes into the earth shadow you've got the reverse happening. I also wonder if you air turbulence in the tube would be a problem?

Oh yes, everything you mentioned would be an issue.. but not necessarily the un-solvable problem... today we have ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics that have better resolution than Hubble... So, I am sure there is a way to compensate for all that :-) .
The beauty of this may be that virtually there is no limit to a size.. Also, if longer wavelengths are used (far IR or even /u-waves) then the distortion of optics is not an issue that much, but the size is, definitely.
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