Large Binocular Telescope successfully achieves "First Light"

The LBT is online and posed to humble the hubble!

First Light


LBT SITE


Wonder what mysteries we will discover with this new powerful telescope.

Perhaps this will reveal the first Earth Like planet or Show the first galaxies or creation itself!

X

[edit on 26-10-2005 by Xeven]

Very, very, cool....

Multi-optical arrays are fasinating. The whole idea of a binocular pair equaling something larger is fantastic.

There has even been talk of linking amateur telescopes that use digital photography, into a collective group for processing images. I guess that makes a telescope as wide as the planet itself.

The average backyard telescope of today, using digital camera and computer processing, can produce an image better than any telescope prior to the digital age, the time before the 1980's.

If only I had the guts to run out and spend a couple of thousand dollars on equipment. I want one too.

thats good news.

but I cant wait until fall 06', when its fully operational...that will be a site to behold.

and hopefully "Hubble Lovers" will see that its no longer the best...and is not worth any more money. A hubble missions would be over 500 million...Yet the LBT can see 10 times better and costs 120 million...with those figures I think (and hope) there is no more disscussion on spending more money on the hubble.

Great..
Aren't the Universal colors beautiful, more than can be imagined..

If it truely does perform as expected then the only objection I would have of scrapping the hubble is that it's a museum piece. Weak I know but still....

Yes, this type of telescope is the way to go. Lots of little ones can be as good a one giant one.

The image is impressive. Too bad it's to big for my back yard.

Though Hubble was the star of it's day, technology and ingenuity have far surpassed it's capabilities. I think an honorable retirement is in order... Down in flames over the Indian Ocean should do.

I like the idea of having a telescope in space above the earth's atmosphere, software and error correction have made distortion from it almost a thing of the past though.

Now the one area we could use a space based telescope is the Terrestial Planet Finder ,as disturbances in the atmosphere would make a ground based version impossible. I'd prefer to dump the funding for Hubble into this type of space based scope.

I'd prefer to dump the funding for Hubble into this type of space based scope.

There is no funding for Hubble...Currently its path isn't even a de-orbit burn-up. Its just let it circle the earth and keep falling lower day by day until several years for now it burns up.

I like that plan the best, since its the cheapest...free.

I would of being mad if Nasa was going to go service the hubble again...However I think it would have being nice to put the hubble back into the shuttles bay, so they could of brought it back for a meuseum...but oh well, money is currently to tight for that.

Nice, but have you seen/heard of Sofia?

Sofia

[edit on 2-11-2005 by NWguy83]

Originally posted by Murcielago
There is no funding for Hubble...

Actually, there was funding for a reservicing mission but, the administration cut it. I would prefer to see those funds reinstated and moved to a different project like TPF.

Originally posted by NWguy83
Nice, but have you seen/heard of Sofia?

I have heard of Sofia but, there is a difference -- it's not optical, it's infrared. An optical would be too hard to stabilize under the conditions Sofia will be using. As to say, you don't really need a "rock stable" platform for infrared platform. You do; however, need one for an optical such as the LBT.

One of the best (mother of all) abilities of the binocular telescope, is as hubble was monocular, and therefore only able to recieve pictures of the light that came through raw, this baby can use both its eyes to cancel out certain light sources, i.e a star, so it may see small planets! Up till now we have only been able to detect the largest of planets. So i saw a documentary on it a few days ago.

[edit on 2-11-2005 by Shadow88]