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Telescopes

Telescopes. Jon Holtzman NMSU Astronomy. Telescopes are light buckets: bigger buckets collect more light, and faint (far away) objects don’t produce much light!. Why build bigger telescopes?. In principle, bigger telescopes make sharper images:. Why build bigger telescopes?.

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Telescopes

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  1. Telescopes Jon Holtzman NMSU Astronomy

  2. Telescopes are light buckets: bigger buckets collect more light, and faint (far away) objects don’t produce much light! Why build bigger telescopes?

  3. In principle, bigger telescopes make sharper images: Why build bigger telescopes? But, in practice, this doesn’t usually work, because as light comes in through the Earth’s atmosphere, motions and inhomgeneties in our atmosphere blur out images: once you get bigger than several inches in diameter, images don’t get sharper!

  4. The telescopes in the domes are 12 inches (0.3m) in diameter • The telescope outside is 16inches (0.4m) in diameter: it collects about twice as much light So how big do telescopes get? Consider NMSU telescopes:

  5. Also 24” inches (0.6m) in diameter • Used a lot in 70’s & 80’s to monitor planets, but hasn’t been used much in last 20 years • We’re working to renovate and start getting it used again! Tortugas Mt. Telescope

  6. Observatory operated by NMSU for the Astrophysical Research Corporation • Four telescopes on site: • 0.5m ARCSAT • 1.0m NMSU • 2.5m SDSS • 3.5m ARC Apache Point Observatory • Small visitor center at nearby National Solar Observatory • ARC 3.5m collects more than 100x the light of the campus observatory telescopes!

  7. 5.0m Hale Palomar Mountain, California • 4.2 William Herschel Canary Islands, Spain • SOAR Cerro Pachon, Chile • LAMOST Xinglong Station, China • 4.0 Victor Blanco Cerro Tololo, Chile • Vista Cerro Paranal, Chile • 3.9 AAT NSW, Australia • 3.8 MayallKitt Peak, Arizona • UKIRT Mauna Kea, Hawaii • 3.7 AEOS Maui, Hawaii • 3.6 "360" Cerro La Silla, Chile. • Canada-France-Hawaii Mauna Kea, Hawaii TelescopioNazionale Galileo, Canary Islands • 3.5 MPI-CAHA Calar Alto, Spain • New Technology Cerro La Silla, Chile • ARC A pache Point, New Mexico • WIYN , Kitt Peak NM Other “medium-sized” telescopes

  8. 8.3 Subaru Mauna Kea, Hawaii 4100 m NAOJ • 8.2 FOUR VLT telescopes Cerro Paranal, Chile • 8.1 Gillett Mauna Kea, Hawaii aka Gemini North • 8.1 Gemini South Cerro Pachon, Chile • 6.5 MMT Mt. Hopkins, Arizona • 6.5  Walter Baade La Serena, Chile aka Magellan I6.5 Landon Clay aka Magellan II • 6.0 Bolshoi Teleskop Azimutalnyi Nizhny Arkhyz, Russia Bigger telescopes: single BIG mirrors

  9. 10.4 Gran Telescopio Canarias La Palma, Canary Islands, 10.0 KeckMauna Kea, Hawaii • ~10 SALTSouth African Astronomical Observatory • 9.2 Hobby-Eberly Mt. Fowlkes, Texas • 8.4 -> 12 Large Binocular TelescopeMt. Graham Bigger telescopes: no longer single pieces of glass!

  10. What about getting sharper images? Remember, bigger telescope collect more light, but they don’t generally give sharper images because images are blurred as light from objects passes through the Earth’s atmosphere So what can we do?

  11. Hubble Space Telescope: 2.4m diameter (so not so big), but above the atmosphere  sharp images! -> also can observe in ultraviolet light Telescopes in Space!

  12. New technology uses small “bendable” mirrors to take the atmospheric blur out of the picture. Blur changes fast, so mirrors need to move fast! But need to measure what the blur is first – need a nearby bright star There aren’t enough bright stars in the sky! So what can you do  make your own star! Another cool idea: “deblur” the atmosphere

  13. Telescopes of the future: bigger and sharper!!

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