ground – A Darker View

With the controversy again raging over the TMT we are again seeing complete mis-representation of astronomy in the press and social media. These postings and comments make interesting reading. These show the wide range of feelings in the community. There also seems to be a misunderstanding about the roles of large telescopes in general.

TMT Rendering — An overhead view of the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope, credit TMT Observatory Corporation

The last two decades has seen an enormous advance in our understanding of the universe and its history. We now know the age of the universe, we have discovered planets around other stars, we have learned that ordinary matter makes up only a small fraction of the universe. These represent huge leaps in our understanding and these revelations have come, to the greater degree, from ground based astronomy. Many of these discoveries have been made, or greatly assisted, by the telescopes atop Mauna Kea.

Note: This post was originally written and posted to the old DarkerView blog in August 2008. Re-posted again as it answers on of the common comments in the current episode of the TMT debate. A few edits thrown in to update for the current context seven years after the first publication.

One of the themes that popped up in the comments several times was the idea that space telescopes are where to put the money and the belief that ground telescopes were “obsolete’, thus projects like TMT are not needed. This could not be further from the truth. Yes there are advantages to space telescopes with respect to interference from the atmosphere. But space telescopes face several severe and inherent disadvantages.

Expense

Space telescopes are hugely expensive for what you get. Hubble is a mere 2 meter class telescope. Very small in the terms of modern telescopes. This limits the performance drastically. Hubble can only collect a little more light than a single segment of the current Keck telescope, and Keck has 36 segments in it’s 10 meter mirror. Work out the math and you find that Keck gathers 25 times more light than than Hubble. The new James Webb Space Telescope will be a 6.5 meter telescope. The Thirty Meter Telescope will be 30 meters with 492 segments, thus will gather 28 times more light than JWST.
Continue reading “TMT versus Space Based Alternatives”

There is an article on the TMT in yesterdays’s Honolulu Advertiser. While the article shows growing community awareness of the Thirty Meter Telescope project and puts forth some of the basics, it concentrates on some of the political issues. Those are, as typical for Hawai’i, rather fractious, showing the very polarized nature of political discourse in the state.

It is the comments that make the most interesting reading. These show the wide range of feelings in the community. There also seems to be a misunderstanding about the roles of large telescopes in general. The last two decades has seen an enormous advance in our understanding of the universe and its history. We now know the age of the universe, we have discovered planets around other stars, we have learned that ordinary matter makes up only a small fraction of the universe. These represent huge leaps in our understanding and these revelations have come, to the greater degree, from ground based astronomy. Many of these discoveries have been made, or greatly assisted, by the telescopes atop Mauna Kea.

Continue reading “TMT versus Space Based Alternatives”