2009 has been deemed the International Year of Astronomy thanks to the 400th anniversary of Galileo's astounding space observations that changed the way humans views the sky. To celebrate, 17 radio telescopes across five continents coordinated for over 33 consecutive hours last week to observe three different quasars—supermassive black holes, each of which lies at the heart of a galaxy. This is the first time that those antennae across the world have been linked in real time through high-speed optical networks. Who said astronomers don't know how to party?
While Galileo's small looking glass was capable of magnifying objects about 20 to 30 times, today astronomers employ enormous optical telescopes to gather space's visible light, as well as telescopes capable of measuring radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum—from gamma rays emitted by pulsars to long radio waves from the deepest regions of space. Today's best telescopes are astounding feats—and astronomers are improving them constantly. Here are the five most powerful telescopes out today—and five more that will define the future of astronomy.
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.
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.
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.
