Do Telescopes Ever Sleep?

I would think not They are very expensive,and only the Hubble
telescope could possibly get damaged. Light reflected off a mirror can't
wear out the mirror. Why can't we have a TV channel showing what are
telescopes around the world are looking at. The great feature would be
getting kids interested in astronomy. Bert

"G=EMC^2 Glazier" wrote in message...
...

I would think not They are very expensive,and only the Hubble
telescope could possibly get damaged. Light reflected off a mirror can't
wear out the mirror. Why can't we have a TV channel showing what are
telescopes around the world are looking at. The great feature would be
getting kids interested in astronomy. Bert

This is has been being done by NASA for quite some time now,
Bert. On our cable network, NASA uses one or more of the
"educational access" channels from time-to-time. And others are
doing it on the web on a limited basis as well.

Since scientists and students "timeshare" the big scopes, there
will hopefully come a time when we shall be able to surf several
channels on our TV, each showing a view from a large scope
accompanied by a brief summary of what project is being
worked on by the student or scientist.

And right after that we may get an "Astronomy On Demand"
channel with taped views of cool events seen by scopes. We'll
be able to "pause," "play again," et cetera...

I'm actually salivating!

--
happy days and...
starry starry nights!

Paine Ellsworth

"G=EMC^2 Glazier" wrote in message
...
I would think not They are very expensive,and only the Hubble
telescope could possibly get damaged. Light reflected off a mirror can't
wear out the mirror. Why can't we have a TV channel showing what are
telescopes around the world are looking at. The great feature would be
getting kids interested in astronomy. Bert

Generally, telescopic images are not captured in real time, such as you seem
to describe here. Even very sensitive CCD cameras can take many minutes to
capture an image, which is monochrome. Then other exposures are taken
through various filters to gather the color information. The final image is
only available after all frames have been captured, aligned and stacked,
processed and enhanced. All of this is done "off-line".

The only practical real time color imagery is from very bright objects such
as planets (I do this all the time with a web cam through my scope) and a
small number of the brighter nebulae and galaxies. Most objects require
much more exposure time.

Hap Griffin
Astrophotos at www.machunter.org

Hi Hap Not to much in the universe happens in real time. The longer
the exposure(more photons) the better the image. I don't mind waiting in
my darkroom to get a clear picture of light stopped in a trillionth of a
second from its source. I even would rather watch NOVA that has Hubble
pictures that I have seen three years ago than all the reruns of laugh
shows,and movies (garbage) that is on TV every day. Seems children have
to be taught to think. If Einstein and Feynman were watching today's TV
as a child they would have taught us nothing. They were very lucky,and
so were we Bert