In article ,
Paul Schlyter wrote:
In article 79512be1-cb35-4a31-832a-d4940ff357e9
, says...

In looking again at the February 2013 Sky and Telescope, on page 9,
Lawrence H. Aller is quoted as noting that many optical astronomers
were, in 1963, struggling with equipment that was a hundred years old.
(But ample funding was available for novel fields, such as radio
astronomy and space satellites.)

This somewhat puts in perspective the funding issues faced by the
astronomical community today.

John Savard

I'm currently reading the book "Giant Telescopes" by W Patrick McCray,
which describes optical astronomy from the 5-meter (200-inch) Palomar
telescope to today's giant telescopes.

The 5-meter Palomar telescope remained the world's largest optical
telescope for 28 years, from 1948 until the russian 6-meter telescope was
finished in 1976. Then it took another 17 years until the 10-meter Keck I
telescope was finished in 1993. During those years there were nine
telescopes 3 meters or larger built though.

And it's going to be the better part of another 28 years from first
light at Keck I to first light at the EELT, with nine eight-metre
scopes built in the interim; it looks as if that's just how astronomy
works.

GTC opened in 2007 but is only marginally bigger than Keck, and it
looks as if instrument development was very badly hit by Spain's
financial trouble; it's being used, but there aren't all that many
papers coming out

http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND.../0/1/0/all/0/1

and it doesn't have the fancy adaptive optics required to compete in
high-resolution ground-based astronomy, or the incredibly stable
spectroscopes required to compete in exoplanet-hunting, or the
wide-field imagers required to compete in lensing-based cosmology.

I don't know if it's quite fair to compare GTC to Keck as if comparing
the Russian BTA with Palomar, but it seems tempting.

Tom