05-13-2015, 05:08 PM
"BTW, Tom took me up to UKIRT once for a tour. No double doors there. Didn't look like much security at Keck either, although we didn't actually go inside."
DaVinci - so you don't remember me frisking you at gunpoint before entering the building? [
] Seriously, you and the entire tour group were free to take photos everywhere inside UKIRT's dome plus the JCMT. You saw the place operate and the people that worked there. Definitely not a military operation.
As for the Air Force observatories, I think HOTPE is accurate. Although I don't know for certain, it's likely they track military and spy satellites launched by other countries not always friendly to the US. Because these satellites are in low Earth orbit (interaction with the edge of our atmosphere and complicated gravitation effects change the orbits on a very short timescale) plus their orbits can be changed under control, they likely need constant tracking from specialist ground-based telescopes.
DaVinci - so you don't remember me frisking you at gunpoint before entering the building? [
] Seriously, you and the entire tour group were free to take photos everywhere inside UKIRT's dome plus the JCMT. You saw the place operate and the people that worked there. Definitely not a military operation.As for the Air Force observatories, I think HOTPE is accurate. Although I don't know for certain, it's likely they track military and spy satellites launched by other countries not always friendly to the US. Because these satellites are in low Earth orbit (interaction with the edge of our atmosphere and complicated gravitation effects change the orbits on a very short timescale) plus their orbits can be changed under control, they likely need constant tracking from specialist ground-based telescopes.