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Telescopes

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Universe's most distant galaxy discovered. Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin may be former football rivals, but the Lone Star State's two research giants have teamed up to detect the most distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy ever found—one created within 700 million years after the Big Bang. The research is published in the most recent edition of the journal Nature. "It's exciting to know we're the first people in the world to see this," said Vithal Tilvi, a Texas A&M postdoctoral research associate and co-author of the paper, set to be available online after Oct. 24. "It raises interesting questions about the origins and the evolution of the universe. " The paper's lead author is Steven Finkelstein, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and 2011 Hubble Fellow who previously was a postdoctoral research associate at Texas A&M under the mentorship of Texas A&M astrophysicist Casey Papovich, who is second author as well as current mentor to Tilvi.

Have the wheels come off Kepler? Nasa's planet hunting telescope hits major problems. Two of the four Kepler wheels have stopped workingNasa engineers are attempting to restart the wheel from Earth because the craft is too far away to send a rescue missionIf the wheel can't be restarted, the four-year mission may have to be abandoned By Victoria Woollaston Published: 09:29 GMT, 16 May 2013 | Updated: 16:22 GMT, 6 January 2014 Nasa's planet-hunting Kepler telescope is broken, potentially jeopardisng the search for other worlds where life could exist outside our solar system. If engineers can't find a fix, the failure could mean an end to the £400 million ($600 million) mission's search - although Nasa says it may still be able to save the ailing telescope.

The telescope has discovered scores of planets but only two so far are the best candidates for habitable planets. Kepler is a space observatory launched by Nasa to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. The Kepler space telescope orbits around the Sun, 40 million miles from Earth. World's largest telescope gets go-ahead to look 13 BILLION light years away. $1bn Telescope will be built at the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano30m mirror will give it nine times the collecting area of the largest optical telescopes in use today By Mark Prigg Published: 11:08 GMT, 15 April 2013 | Updated: 13:51 GMT, 15 April 2013 Plans to build the world's largest optical telescope on top of a volcano in Hawaii have been approved.

The plan by California and Canadian universities call for a 30m telescope, the largest ever created. The $1bn telescope would be able to observe planets that orbit stars other than the sun and enable astronomers to watch new planets and stars being formed. Scroll down for video The telescope would be able to observe planets that orbit stars other than the sun and enable astronomers to watch new planets and stars being formed Mauna Kea's peak already hosts about a dozen telescopes.

The state's isolated location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean also means the area is relatively free of air pollution. Earth's largest telescope set for switch on - and it could reveal where we came from. Made up of 66 giant antennae which gather faint radio waves from space for processing by a supercomputerALMA is situated in the Chile desert at 16,400ft – roughly half the cruising height of a jumbo jet and almost four times higher than Ben NevisBy collecting radio waves rather than optical light, ALMA can look through the dense dust clouds of deep space By Fiona Macrae Science Correspondent Published: 15:12 GMT, 12 March 2013 | Updated: 13:35 GMT, 13 March 2013 It looks like it belongs in a science fiction film but this ‘time machine’ could provide us with the facts about where we came from. To be switched on today, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, is the world’s most powerful telescope. It is also the highest on the planet and, at almost £1billion, the most expensive of its kind.

Scroll down for videos Under construction: Four of the first ALMA antennas at the Array Operations Site (AOS), located at 5000 metres altitude on the Chajnantor plateau, in the II Region of Chile.

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Telescope. A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation (such as visible light). The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century, using glass lenses. They found use in terrestrial applications and astronomy. Within a few decades, the reflecting telescope was invented, which used mirrors. In the 20th century many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s and infrared telescopes in the 1960s. The word telescope now refers to a wide range of instruments detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors.

History[edit] The earliest recorded working telescopes were the refracting telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. The 20th century also saw the development of telescopes that worked in a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays. Types[edit] Radio telescopes[edit] List of radio telescopes. This is a list of radio telescopes - over one hundred - that are or have been used for radio astronomy. The list includes both single dishes and interferometric arrays. The list is sorted by region, then by name; unnamed telescopes are in reverse size order at the end of the lists. Africa[edit] Antarctica[edit] Asia[edit] Australia[edit] Europe[edit] Atlantic Ocean[edit] Indian Ocean[edit] Pacific Ocean[edit] North America[edit] South America[edit] Space-based[edit] Under construction or planned construction[edit] Proposed telescopes[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] The Very Large Array at Socorro, New Mexico. The Karl G.

Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is a radio astronomy observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, some 50 miles (80 km) west of Socorro, New Mexico, USA. Astronomers using the VLA have made key observations of black holes and protoplanetary disks around young stars, discovered magnetic filaments and traced complex gas motions at the Milky Way's center, probed the Universe's cosmological parameters, and provided new knowledge about the physical mechanisms that produce radio emission. The VLA stands at an elevation of 6970 ft (2124 m) above sea level. It is a component of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).[2] U.S. Characteristics[edit] Antenna Assembly Building at VLA There are four commonly used configurations, designated A (the largest) through D (the tightest, when all the dishes are within 600 m of the center point).

The frequency coverage is 74 MHz to 50 GHz (400 to 0.7 cm).[6] Upgrade and renaming[edit] Visiting[edit] Atacama Large Millimeter Array. The Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) is an astronomical interferometer of radio telescopes in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. Since a high and dry site is crucial to millimeter wavelength operations, the array has been constructed on the Chajnantor plateau at 5,000 metres altitude, near Llano de Chajnantor Observatory and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. Consisting of 66 12 metre (39 ft), and 7 metre (23 ft) diameter radio telescopes observing at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths, ALMA is expected to provide insight on star birth during the early universe and detailed imaging of local star and planet formation. ALMA is an international partnership between Europe, the United States, Canada, East Asia and the Republic of Chile.

"Alma" can mean soul in Spanish and Portuguese. Overview[edit] Three ALMA antennas linked together as an interferometer for the first time. The telescopes are provided by the European, North American and East Asian partners of ALMA. List of solar telescopes. List of solar telescopes sorted by default by year of completion, with newer telescopes higher up. Large solar telescopes after 1900[edit] Ground-based professional observatory telescopes at optical wavelengths in a chronological list. Solar telescopes often have multiple focal lengths, and use various combination of mirrors (such as coelostats), lenses, and tubes for instruments including spectrographs, cameras, or coronographs. There are many types of instruments that have been designed to observe Earth's Sun, for example, in the 20th century solar towers were common. Telescopes for the sun have existed for hundreds of years, this list is not complete and only goes back to 1900. Other types of solar telescopes[edit] There are much smaller commercial and/or amateur telescopes such as Coronado Filters from founder and designer David Lunt, bought by Meade Instruments in 2004 and sells SoloarMax solar telescopes up to 8 cm[18][19] Solar Space Observatories[edit] References[edit] See also[edit]

List of space telescopes. This list is incomplete This list of space telescopes (astronomical space observatories) is grouped by major frequency ranges: gamma ray, x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, microwave and radio. Telescopes that work in multiple frequency bands are included in all of the appropriate sections. Space telescopes that collect particles, such as cosmic ray nuclei and/or electrons, as well as instruments that aim to detect gravitational waves, are also listed. Missions that look solely within our solar system, including the Earth, Sun, and other planets within our system, are mostly excluded; see List of Solar System probes for these. List may not be complete or updated. Two values are provided for the dimensions of the initial orbit. For telescopes in Earth orbit, the min and max altitude are given in kilometers. Rows with a dark backdrop are terminated missions.

Gamma ray[edit] Gamma ray telescopes collect and measure individual, high energy gamma rays from astrophysical sources. X-ray[edit] Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation.[7] A 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. The telescope is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST was built by the United States space agency NASA, with contributions from the European Space Agency, and is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute. The HST is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.[8] Hubble is the only telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts.

Conception, design and aims[edit] Proposals and precursors[edit] List of largest optical reflecting telescopes. The two Keck telescopes Largest does not always equate to being the best telescopes, and overall light gathering power of the optical system can be poor measure of a telescope's performance. Space-based telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, take advantage of being above the Earth's atmosphere to reach higher resolution and greater light gathering through longer exposure time.

Location in the northern or southern hemisphere of the Earth can also limit what part of the sky can be observed. Table of reflecting telescopes[edit] This list is ordered by optical aperture, which has historically been a useful gauge of limiting resolution, optical area, physical size, and cost. There are only a few sites capable of polishing the mirrors for these telescopes. This table does not include all the largest mirrors manufactured. Segmented mirrors are also referred to as mosaic mirrors.

Top telescopes of 2010[edit] *Baseline does not reduce with viewing angle Top telescopes of 2000[edit] List of large optical telescopes. List of large optical reflecting telescopes. For telescopes larger than 3 meters in aperture see List of largest optical reflecting telescopes. This list combines large or expensive reflecting telescopes from any era, as what constitutes famous reflector has changed over time. In 1900 a 1 meter reflector would be among the largest in the world, but by 2000, would be relatively common for professional observatories. Large reflectors & catadiotropic[edit] See List of largest optical reflecting telescopes for continuation of list to larger scopes Selected telescopes below about 2 meters aperture[edit] A non-comprehensive non-exclusionary list of telescopes one yard to less than 2 metres in aperture.

Selected telescopes below about 1 meter/yard aperture[edit] See also[edit] References[edit]