Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Largest Earth-Based Telescopes in the World

Hello Readers / Viewers,
This post is a collection of some images. You can say it a photo-post rather than a normal post or an article. There are lot's of photo blogs on the internet which are just collection of photos / images / pics, and these photo-blogs are getting popularity day by day.

There is a saying that An Image is a better Description than thousands of Words! I think it's right, what do you think? Every search engines has the most common options Image Search like other web / video / news / map searches.

Anyway,
Today the collection of pics in this post, is about some Largest / Biggest Telescopes ever built or going to build in the Earth by the human. These all are Earth-Based Telescopes and in my next post will be about the Space-Based Telescopes.


1. The European Extremely Large Telescope - EELT:
There is no other optical terrestrial telescope that is comparable with the proposed design for the European Extremely Large Telescope. The European Extremely Large Telescope, which will cost roughly 1,3 billion dollars, will see the daylight roughly in the same period in which ‘its younger cousins’ shall emerge, meaning around the year 2018.

2. Square Kilometre Array - SKA:
A successor of the radio telescopes, like ALMA, this is a telescope capable of collecting data in an area of one square kilometer. The power of SKA would be able to examine signals coming from the early Universe, 12 billion years ago. The current blueprints are for either 30 stations with a collecting surface of 200 meters, or for 150 stations – and each station would be equivalent of a 90-meter telescope. South Africa and Australia already expressed their desire to host this 2 billion mammoth which is scheduled for finalizing in the year 2020.

3. The Thirty Meters Telescope - TMT:
This telescope’s aperture is 30 meters (98 feet) and it’s worth 1,4 billion dollars and it would allow a collecting area nine times larger than the one allowed in the present days by the largest terrestrial telescopes like the Keck Telescopes and could also offer a resolution 12 times larger than the Hubble Spatial Telescope. The Thirty Meters Telescope is scheduled to join the Keck Telescopes and other instruments from Mauna Kea from Hawaii and commence its operations until 2025 or the latest in 2030.

4. The Giant Magellan Telescope - GMT:
The Giant Magellan Telescope that will cost roughly 1.1 billion dollars and will have a main mirror of 24.5 meters (80 feet) comprised from seven segments. An 8.4-meter (28 feet) segment will sit in the middle being surrounded by the other six segments that will have a unique curved form. The main big mirror will make the current generation of 8 to 10 meters telescopes be meaningless and, also, will produce images 10 times clearer than the Hubble Spatial Telescope. If financed entirely, the telescope could find a home in the Las Campanas Observer from La Serene, Chile and would commence its operations by the year 2024.

5. Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Observer:
One of the largest astronomical terrestrial instruments came under the shape of several 12-meter (40 feet) radio antennas, which constitute the main matrix of the observer. This aspect will make ALMA the largest and the most sensitive radio telescope that has ever been built – at least until a new competitor emerges. A compact configuration would place all the antennas in a area smaller than 304 meters (997 feet) or in an extended configuration with a maximum separation distance between the antennas of almost 16 kilometers (roughly 10 miles). This possibility of customization allows this network to study almost anything from the ‘dark ages’ of cosmos from billions of years ago to the forming processes of the stars and planets.

6. The Arecibo Observer:
One of the easiest to recognize in terms of terrestrial telescopes is located near Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It has the shape of a huge radio antenna of 305 meters (1000 feet). This telescope has functioned since the year 1963. The radio telescope Arecibo is still considered the largest telescope with a single aperture that was ever built – as its spherical reflector consists of 40,000 aluminum panels, each with the dimension of 0,91 meters x 1,82 meters (35,8 inch x 71,6 inch). These kinds of radio sources include quasars and distant galaxies that issue radio waves that reach the Earth only after 100 million years.

7. The Grande Telescope of Canary Islands - GTC:
In the year 2009, a 10,4-meter (34 feet) telescope located in La Palma from the Canary Islands was designated the largest terrestrial optical telescope. The main mirror of this telescope which consists of 36 hexagonal segments contains one of the finest surfaces ever made by man. The telescope also has several support instruments like the CanariCam, which is a photo camera capable of examining the infrared light issued by the stars and the planets.

8. The Keck I and Keck II telescopes:
The 10 meters (33 feet) twin telescopes from the W. M. Keck Observer are placed on the 2nd place in a top counting the largest telescopes on Earth. These telescopes are located nearby the top of the Mauna Kea volcano from Hawaii. The main mirror of each of these two telescopes consists of 36 hexagonal segments that are bound to work together. Keck I became operational in the year 1993 and several years later (in the year 1996) it was seconded by Keck II.

9. South African Large Telescope - SALT:
This 9.2 meters (30 feet) telescope represents the largest optical terrestrial instrument from the southern hemisphere. The main mirror of the telescope consists of 91 hexagonal united mirrors (something like the Hobby-Eberly Telescope from Texas, USA). The instrument can see approximately 70% from the observable sky from Sutherland, South Africa.

10. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope - LSST:
LSST is a new terrestrial observer that would scan the entire available sky once every three nights. This observer shall be built in Chile and it shall see the daylight in the year 2014. This observer could also help approaching issues with regards to the nature of dark matter and could follow the spatial rocks that could enter a collision course with the Earth in the future. The optic telescope would photograph each region of the sky 1000 times in ten years with an aperture of roughly 8.4 meters (27 feet). This telescope represented a top priority among the terrestrial projects scheduled for the next ten years.

Thanks a lot for viewing this post.

other related posts:
NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Earth-Like-Planet
Solar Electric Scooter - SES - Future Vehicle
Little about our own Solar System

No comments:

Post a Comment

Share/Bookmark