Latest Optical telescope Stories
PPARC -- Astronomers from across Europe today (July 7th) took a step closer to making their plans for a giant telescope a reality when they unveiled the scientific case for an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) - a monster telescope with a light capturing mirror of between 50 and 100 metres, dwarfing all previous optical telescope facilities. The announcement was made at a meeting in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands and initiates the design phase of the project. Astronomers plan to use the ELT to...
Through the night of 4 July 2005, all European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescopes observed the effects of the impact on Comet 9P/Tempel 1. At sunset in Chile, the seven telescopes of the La Silla Paranal Observatory went into action. The FORS2 multi-mode instrument on Antu, one of the 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) array, took stunning images, showing that the morphology of the comet had dramatically changed: a new bright fan-like structure was now visible. The...
RAS -- The largest ground-based optical telescopes in use today use mirrors that are 10 m (33 ft) across. But the prospects for future Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) are looking up. According to recent studies by international teams of astronomers and leading astronomical organisations, the next generation of optical telescopes could be 50-100 metres (165 330 ft) in diameter - big enough to fill a sports stadium. This quantum leap in size has important implications, since astronomers want...
USNO -- A team of astronomers from the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO), Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have successfully used the ultra high-resolution capability of the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (NPOI) to track the orbit of a binary star invisible to other ground- and space-based optical telescopes. These findings are being presented at the American Astronomical Society's 205th meeting in San Diego, California by Dr. Robert Zavala from...
Latest Optical telescope Reference Libraries
A telescope, designed to aid the observation of remote objects, collects some form of electromagnetic radiation (such as visible light). The Netherlands developed the first known practical telescope in the 17th century. The term "telescope" was termed in order to describe Galileo's instruments in 1611. However, Galileo was not the inventor of the telescope. It was Hans Lippershey, Zacharias Janssen, and Jacob Metius who are credited with the creation of the telescope. In 1668, Isaac Newton...
Very Large Telescope -- The Very Large Telescope (VLT) consist of four optical telescopes that have 8.4 meter aperture. The VLT is a project of the European Southern Observatory organization. It is located at the Paranal Observatory on Cerro Paranal, a 2,635-m high mountain in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The VLT consists of a cluster four of large telescopes, and an interferometer (VLTI) which will be used to resolve fine features. The telescopes have been named after the...
Telescope -- A telescope is an instrument composed of one or more lenses or mirrors to gather and focus electromagnetic radiation. Telescopes increase the observed angular size of objects, as well as their apparent brightness. The largest telescopes are used in astronomy. A telescope was first turned on the sky by Galileo Galilei, the Italian scientist. (Telescopes used for non-astronomical purposes may be called "transits," "monoculars," "binoculars," "camera lenses," or "spyglasses".)...
Adaptive Optics -- Adaptive optics is a technology to improve the performance of Earth-based telescopes, reversing the effect of atmospheric distortions. When light from a star or another astronomical object enters the Earth's atmosphere, the different temperature layers and different wind speeds distort and move the image in various ways (see seeing for a proper discussion). The net result is that an 8 meters or 10 meters telescope (like the VLT or Keck), while theoretically capable...
Active Optics -- Active optics is a relatively new technology for astronomic telescopes. Most modern telescopes are reflectors, with the primary element being a very large mirror. Historically, a fixed weight-to-diameter relation was used to build these mirrors, limiting their maximum diameter to 5 or 6 meters (200 or 230 inches), like in the Palomar Observatory. A new generation of telescopes uses instead very thin mirrors, uncapable of sustaining themselves. Instead, an array of...
![Swift Telescope View of Exoplanet HD 189733b\](/media/gallery/hubble-space-telescope/thumbs/thumbs_swifttelescopeview.jpg "Swift Telescope View of Exoplanet HD 189733b\")
