Antarctica 'perfect spot for stargazers(news article)
From--/news.ninemsn.com.au
It's the coldest, driest, most remote place on the entire planet but, as far as stargazers are concerned, it's prime real estate.
No human has ever set foot on what has been tentatively named Ridge A in the centre of the Antarctic plateau but University of New South Wales astronomers believe it could be the best place on Earth for an observatory.
The calm, dry conditions mean the stars in the night sky are three times brighter than at any current observatory location on Earth.
But the price to pay for perfect stargazing conditions is winters where the temperature doesn't get much warmer than -70 degrees Celsius.
UNSW visiting professor and study leader Will Saunders said a "modestly-sized telescope" would be as powerful at Ridge A as any of the biggest telescopes currently in use elsewhere.
"You think of Antarctica as being stormy and windy, but they have this plateau that is 4000 metres high and the wind just rolls off it," he said.
"It's so calm that there’s almost no wind or weather there at all."
Dr Saunders said while Australia was well positioned for radio telescopes, a lack of high mountains puts Australia at a disadvantage for building optical and infra-red telescopes.
"For optical astronomy and infra-red astronomy there's nowhere high enough in Australia," he said.
"Ridge A looks to be significantly better than elsewhere on the Antarctic plateau and far superior to the best existing observatories on high mountain tops in Hawaii and Chile."
With the potential to be nearly as good as the Hubble telescope, Dr Saunders said an Antarctic-based observatory would be much, much cheaper.
"It would be between a hundred and a thousand times cheaper than putting a telescope into space," he said.
"We calculated it would cost $100 million to build and run for ten years, but to put that in context, the Hubble probably cost $10 billion."
Located in Australian Antarctic Territory, Ridge A is close to an international robotic observatory and a Chinese telescope currently under construction.
UNSW visiting professor and study leader Will Saunders said a "modestly-sized telescope" would be as powerful at Ridge A as any of the biggest telescopes currently in use elsewhere.
"You think of Antarctica as being stormy and windy, but they have this plateau that is 4000 metres high and the wind just rolls off it," he said.
I'm intrigued by the expression "the wind just rolls off it". Is this a euphemism for very windy?
Katabatic winds....the plateau is that high that the winds develop on its flanks and roll down the side rather than disturb the top of the plateau. The top is essentially outside the wind zone, hence calm.
