Am I the only one who sees this, or does this look like the head of some giant friendly robot, all smiles with big cheeks? Remember Brad Bird’s Iron Giant, for example?
Well, it is actually not from science fiction but science fact. And it is a robot, sort of – well it can be controlled remotely to swivel its head and so forth. It is actually a telescope. A huge one! It’s called the Large Binocular Telescope and it is a truly marvellous new instrument. Some wonderful astronomy will be done with it. You can learn more about it on this NPR story. Extract:
The 580-ton telescope is twice as big as the next-largest telescope on Earth, and it has 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. The LBT cannot see farther than Hubble, but the images it sends back are much sharper and of a much wider field than the space telescope.
There’s audio, and a transcript that you can peruse.
Enjoy!
-cvj
Claudio…. simply read the blog post.
Thanks.
-cvj
I cant believe my eyes, one time i was in russia for work and had time to visit around, we visited a moon station or whatever you wanna call it, you know those places where you have big scopes to see in space, well i saw something real big…but never have in my life seen a binocular that big! Can you please tell me where you got that picture from? im intrested in knowing where that binocular is installed. Thanks
Ah, my baby is growing up!
In my high school days of geekdom (not to be confused with my college ones) I went to astronomy camp several times out in Arizona, and I got to go out to the LBT several times. First time was in 2003, when there was still only one mirror installed (saw the second one being made in the U of AZ mirror lab that year) and it was cool to go back several times to see what progress was being made. Even got to sleep there a few times, twice on the first floor and once in the control room… so no matter what, from here on out I was the FIRST to sleep in there! 😉
Ah, so many good memories, might have to write another blog post with some of my old pictures. I will note one last thing though- the Milky Way there has got to be the best I’ve ever seen. You know what thickness it normally has under dark skies? Imagine about three times that.
‘Number Five’ if I’m not mistaken. It’s hard to believe that was over twenty years ago. More seriously, the threat posed to Jodrell Bank by the twin tyrannies of peer review and parsimony must count as a full on tragedy – when he was an undergraduate my uncle helped Bernard Lovell put together the first Radio Telescope there – mainly soldering and shifting heavier items about – we were so proud when they copped the Sputnik before everyone else.
I found this story rather heartening after hearing all the recent depressing rumours in England about the possible closure of Jodrell Bank and the radio telescopes in Cambridge due to cuts in funding. The telescope does indeed look like an avuncular robot. It also brought to mind the Professor’s ‘Smelloscope’ (or whatever it is called) from ‘Futurama’!