02-11-2016, 05:31 PM
"Arecibo and Australian radio telescopes have received instrumentation upgrades so they can see through the center of the galaxy to the other side and beyond, the "blind spot" which has been there in human observation for 3 million years (looking up and seeing the Milky Way obscuring what is "behind" it)."
Radio telescopes have always had the ability to "see through the center of the galaxy to the other side and beyond", however, they have poor resolution themselves unless combined as a very long baseline interferometer. They are also good at detecting complex molecules. They, can't however, measure the full electromagnetic spectrum and therefore on their own are not particularly useful these days unless combined with telescopes working at other wavelengths.
"Radio and infrared penetrate much better than optical. The era of lenses and giant mirrors is coming to an end, the TMT would have been one of the last brontosaurus."
(Quiet everyone, don't tell Ted that the TMT will be an optical/infrared telescope and quite capable of working in the infrared, and definitely don't mention it'll be using mirrors).
"It's starting to look like the demise of the Earth bound optical telescope is going to start in less than 5 years. There is no advantage to locking on to stars from a spinning reference platform. Lightweight individually magnified sensor arrays are going to be much cheaper and easier to locate in space."
But somehow orbiting telescopes aren't in a spinning reference frame?
As for this claim about "Lightweight individually magnified sensor arrays", I've already addressed that in another thread and they cannot replace the capabilities of ground based telescopes, a response I assume Ted thinks "moronic" yet won't explain why.
http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=21905&whichpage=3
"Not sure what this has to do with proposed 9th planet, but the technology Lockheed Martin are developing is aimed at relatively small imaging telescopes used to take images of the Earth (not something ground-based telescopes do anyway), and, as the article says, other planets. If you want the resolving and light collecting power of a 30-meter telescope, you would still need to launch a 30-meter diameter telescope into space which has the optical precision of a ground-based telescope. That technology is decades away."
"Also, since much of the work that ground-based telescopes do is spectroscopy, and since spectral information is lost in the process of forming interference fringes, then I hardly see how this will make ground-based telescopes become obsolete."
"TMT has to make a decision in two years whether it wants to keep fighting or find a new location, or go obsolete in the 8 years it will take to build it."
This is nonsense as usual. It will not go obsolete for decades, the same for the GMT and the ELT. Anything that makes the TMT obsolete is unlikely to come around in our lifetimes. Having it move from Hawaii, however, will mean its capabilities won't be exploited to their limits.
Radio telescopes have always had the ability to "see through the center of the galaxy to the other side and beyond", however, they have poor resolution themselves unless combined as a very long baseline interferometer. They are also good at detecting complex molecules. They, can't however, measure the full electromagnetic spectrum and therefore on their own are not particularly useful these days unless combined with telescopes working at other wavelengths.
"Radio and infrared penetrate much better than optical. The era of lenses and giant mirrors is coming to an end, the TMT would have been one of the last brontosaurus."
(Quiet everyone, don't tell Ted that the TMT will be an optical/infrared telescope and quite capable of working in the infrared, and definitely don't mention it'll be using mirrors).
"It's starting to look like the demise of the Earth bound optical telescope is going to start in less than 5 years. There is no advantage to locking on to stars from a spinning reference platform. Lightweight individually magnified sensor arrays are going to be much cheaper and easier to locate in space."
But somehow orbiting telescopes aren't in a spinning reference frame?
As for this claim about "Lightweight individually magnified sensor arrays", I've already addressed that in another thread and they cannot replace the capabilities of ground based telescopes, a response I assume Ted thinks "moronic" yet won't explain why.
http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=21905&whichpage=3
"Not sure what this has to do with proposed 9th planet, but the technology Lockheed Martin are developing is aimed at relatively small imaging telescopes used to take images of the Earth (not something ground-based telescopes do anyway), and, as the article says, other planets. If you want the resolving and light collecting power of a 30-meter telescope, you would still need to launch a 30-meter diameter telescope into space which has the optical precision of a ground-based telescope. That technology is decades away."
"Also, since much of the work that ground-based telescopes do is spectroscopy, and since spectral information is lost in the process of forming interference fringes, then I hardly see how this will make ground-based telescopes become obsolete."
"TMT has to make a decision in two years whether it wants to keep fighting or find a new location, or go obsolete in the 8 years it will take to build it."
This is nonsense as usual. It will not go obsolete for decades, the same for the GMT and the ELT. Anything that makes the TMT obsolete is unlikely to come around in our lifetimes. Having it move from Hawaii, however, will mean its capabilities won't be exploited to their limits.