Lunar based Observatory

Seems like a good idea off the top of my head. Lets see:

- Barely any atmospheric interference.

- 'Dark Side' of the Moon will have less Earthshine to deal with.

- Lesser gravity allows for different construction and perhaps larger
optical elements.

- Lunar material could be used for building stuffs, given a decent
smelter.

We could collect the images 'locally' and beam them back to Earth via
laser (or microwave or whatever).

There could even be a superbig Lunar version of the Arecibo Radio
Telescope (if you saw the movie 'Contact'...) that was built in Puerto
Rico.

Just blue-sky daydreaming, but sketching out some brainstorms might
lead somewhere, someday.


berk

TBerk wrote:

Seems like a good idea off the top of my head. Lets see:

- Barely any atmospheric interference.

Check.

- 'Dark Side' of the Moon will have less Earthshine to deal with.

?? But still sunshine. Well suited for radio astronomy, however.

- Lesser gravity allows for different construction and perhaps larger
optical elements.

Check.

- Lunar material could be used for building stuffs, given a decent
smelter.

Bzzzzzzt! Wrong answer. That answer calls for hundreds or possibly
thousand of humans and dozens of factories and millions of tons of
support for those humans. That's the SF way. Cost: incalculably large.
Relatively simple robots do the work with materials prefabricated on
the Earth.

We could collect the images 'locally' and beam them back to Earth via
laser (or microwave or whatever).

Check. We do have some considerable experience sending imagery across
long distances. I vote for radio so that we can get our images on
cloudy days as well as sunny :-)

There could even be a superbig Lunar version of the Arecibo Radio
Telescope (if you saw the movie 'Contact'...) that was built in Puerto
Rico.

Do you mean the one they're getting ready to shut down for lack of
funding? That doesn't bode well for spending a trillion $ or so to
build observatories on the Moon, does it?

Just blue-sky daydreaming, but sketching out some brainstorms might
lead somewhere, someday.

Someday. Maybe.

Davoud

--
I agree with almost everything that you have said and almost everything that
you will say in your entire life.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt cawm

On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:48:32 -0800 (PST), TBerk
wrote:

Seems like a good idea off the top of my head. Lets see:

A radio telescope on the lunar farside would seem to make a lot of
sense. I can't see that the Moon really provides any advantages for
optical telescopes that can't be realized much cheaper from a
space-based platform, though. For that matter, it probably doesn't
provide such a huge advantage over Earth-based optical telescopes, which
can be made arbitrarily large fairly easily, can be maintained and
upgraded easily, and are increasingly able to cancel most of the effects
of the atmosphere (the highest resolution images today come from
ground-based telescopes, not the HST.)
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

In article , Davoud wrote:
TBerk wrote:
There could even be a superbig Lunar version of the Arecibo Radio
Telescope (if you saw the movie 'Contact'...) that was built in Puerto
Rico.

Do you mean the one they're getting ready to shut down for lack of
funding? That doesn't bode well for spending a trillion $ or so to
build observatories on the Moon, does it?

There is an Arecibo successor being built in central China at the
moment, in a natural depression of the same sort of shape as the
Arecibo one; called the Five Hundred Metre Spherical Telescope.

Perhaps it too will be shut down for lack of funding in another fifty
years.

Tom

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:33:03 -0500, Davoud wrote:

TBerk wrote:


- 'Dark Side' of the Moon will have less Earthshine to deal with.


The "dark" side gets more light than the side that faces us.

On Nov 22, 3:59*pm, _
wrote:

The "dark" side gets more light than the side that faces us.

OK, I'll bite.

This is not intuitive to me. Perhaps you could provide a little
explanation.

\Paul

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:31:11 -0800 (PST), palsing
wrote:

The "dark" side gets more light than the side that faces us.

OK, I'll bite.

This is not intuitive to me. Perhaps you could provide a little
explanation.

It's not such an easy analysis. The near side is occasionally in the
Earth's shadow, which would bring down the overall average amount of
light for that side. But the far side never sees Earthshine, which would
reduce its total light.

Realistically, both effects are going to be negligible compared with the
total light received from the Sun, I would think.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:48:32 -0800 (PST), TBerk
wrote:

Seems like a good idea off the top of my head. Lets see:

A radio telescope on the lunar farside would seem to make a lot of
sense.

Only a very large one working at frequencies where the Earth is radio
bright at due to artificial emissions. There are enough gaps in the
radio spectrum window for most astrophysics to be done from the ground.

Although whenever a new spectral gap opens even for an instant
astronomers will have a look in it to see if there are any new
discoveries to be had. This is occurring in the switchover to DTV as
some analogue frequencies are freed up and unoccupied for a while. eg

http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...on-astronomers

I can't see that the Moon really provides any advantages for
optical telescopes that can't be realized much cheaper from a
space-based platform, though. For that matter, it probably doesn't
provide such a huge advantage over Earth-based optical telescopes, which

There is an advantage to space based scopes in that they can use
wavelengths that are not available on the ground.

can be made arbitrarily large fairly easily, can be maintained and
upgraded easily, and are increasingly able to cancel most of the effects
of the atmosphere (the highest resolution images today come from
ground-based telescopes, not the HST.)

Increasingly light grasp for spectroscopy is more important than
resolution as such. So big scopes will always be in demand.

Regards,
Martin Brown

In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

Increasingly light grasp for spectroscopy is more important than
resolution as such. So big scopes will always be in demand.

A lot depends on the source; if you're hunting planets, a light-bucket
is perfect and you can spend all your money on the spectrometer. But
there's also interesting science to be had in very crowded fields (the
Galactic centre most obviously), where you might want to get distinct
spectra for each of a hundred stars at the core of omega Centauri to
see what the dynamics are like, and for that you need resolution and
spectral grasp.

There are some interesting recent arxiv papers doing dynamics on M31's
satellites by using multi-object spectrographs on a sample of several
hundred red giants.

(out of curiosity, who here reads arxiv astro-ph? A lot of it is some
way over my head, and some of the applied-relativity is miles over my
head, but I can pretty well understand the exoplanet papers now; I
suppose it's my main amateur astronomic activity, I have no car and my
neighbours recently put in bright security lights)

Tom

On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:01:49 GMT, Sam Wormley wrote:

_ wrote:
On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:33:03 -0500, Davoud wrote:

TBerk wrote:

- 'Dark Side' of the Moon will have less Earthshine to deal with.


The "dark" side gets more light than the side that faces us.

A spinning orb in the sunlight has a side (other than the poles)
that gets more light? Care to explain?

Lunar eclipses; though Peterson's (valid) point means that more strictly
speaking the dark side gets more SUNlight.