future of astronomy astronomy 315 professor lee carkner lecture 23
TRANSCRIPT
Future of Astronomy
Astronomy 315Professor Lee
CarknerLecture 23
Yerkes Observatory
1897
The Future of Astronomy
What would we like to understand better? Formation and evolution of stars and
planets
Formation and evolution of black holes
Problems and Solutions
We want to study fainter objects
We want better detail
We want to study a broad range of astrophysical phenomena Use multiwavelength telescopes
Key Initiatives
While much science is done with small and common instruments, there are several large and expensive new projects that we hope will lead to big breakthroughs
Three of these are: A Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope
Webb Space Telescope
See earliest galaxies
View protoplanetary disks
To be launched in 2013 (?) Cost:
Webb Format
Want to be both high performance and cheap
To get large mirror to fit in small launch vehicle, mirror folds up
Constellation X Would have collecting area ~100 times
larger than current X-ray telescopes Would be able to get high resolution X-
ray spectra of:
Key challenge is coordinating the 4 telescopes
Future Ground Based Telescopes
Currently the worlds largest telescope is the 10 meter Keck on Mauna Kea
Much larger telescopes are called ELTs
US is looking into a 30 meter Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT)
Extremely Large Telescopes
Success of large telescopes depends on adaptive optics
ELT’s would complement NGST For follow up observations that require
greater sensitivity
HobbyEberly
Telescope1997
Telescope Trends
21st century astronomy versus 20th century astronomy:
Next Time
Meet in planetarium Bring telescope sketches to hand
in Be prepared to sketch the Sun