For sale: Another telescope on Mauna Kea

[TomK]

Thanks for that, DaVinci, and it really was a pleasure to give that tour of the summit and UKIRT and of course to meet you. In fact I've just come back down from giving another tour of the summit to a couple of neighbors including visits of the JCMT and UKIRT and they seemed to love it. The sunset was stunning as well which I hope I captured with my camera! Over the years, when I've given tours up there to visitors, they invariably say it was the highlight of their time on the Big Island even over seeing an active volcano, so it's clearly a very special place.

Pog - haven't been able to watch the entire video because of my poor internet connection, but managed to watch 2/3rds of the 6-minute segment and I actually think it was very good. It explained the science very well and in a way I'm sure many kids would understand, so I'm all for it. I'll try and watch the rest of the segment next week and if I have any further thoughts will say more. One thing I will say now though, for years I've always had a problem with science fiction which can give people the wrong idea about reality and much of the UFO reports you see are often based on what's in the movies. On the other hand, science fiction has also got many people interested in science and astronomy (Star Trek is a great example). This robot astronomy stuff, which I've never seen before, made the fiction part ridiculous and amusing to the point where I hope the kids watching it know that stuff isn't real but the science they explained was, which is great. And, frankly, I learned something new as well!

Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/

[TomK]

Still haven't been able to watch the end of the video, but am curious what your friends and NASA relative had to say about it. The one thing I learned is that I was aware of the "Yarkovsky effect" but didn't realise NASA were using it now to measure asteroid masses - I checked to see if that bit was true and it is. Clever stuff but using very fundamental and basic physics.

The Yarkovsky effect has been seen as a way of altering orbits of asteroids that might potentially collide with the earth, even to the point of "painting" them to change their albedo, just didn't know it was being used in another way. It's important because you want to know the mass of an asteroid that could hit the the earth because:

1) If it's below a certain mass it's likely not worth the effort and expense to attempt to prevent the collision;

2) If it's big enough to be a real problem, you need to know well in advance so the orbit can be adjusted and to do that you need to know the mass.

The one thing it might not tell you (but suspect it will give us a good idea) is what the asteroid is made of. A dense lump of iron is likely to need a different response to a loosely jumbled up jamboree of ice and lighter rock, but you need advance warning to have time to determine that. The telescopes on Mauna Kea can do that given enough time to do it.


Tom
http://apacificview.blogspot.com/