Author Topic: How About A Space Telescope In Mars-Sun L2 or Mars Orbit?  (Read 11379 times)

Offline daedalus1

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There're proposals for putting space telescope in the outer solar system, there're legitimate science reasons for it: A small telescope past Saturn could solve some mysteries of the universe better than giant telescopes near Earth

The proposal is for a small telescope to look from afar at our inner solar system, so not relevant.

Offline Jim

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There're proposals for putting space telescope in the outer solar system, there're legitimate science reasons for it: A small telescope past Saturn could solve some mysteries of the universe better than giant telescopes near Earth
Don't most planetary probes already contain a small telescope?  Could one be used during the cruise phase or later?  Where there any proposals for Voyager or New Horizons' LORRI after the last encounter?  Or is "past Saturn" an understatement and they really mean "far far past Farfarout"?

Just imagers

Offline Greg Hullender

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New Horizons did a parallax measurement to Alpha Centauri, but it was a one-off. The problem is that they imagers on these probes don't have the resolution to detect parallax unless it's very large. Also, they don't have very large fields of view.

To do serious parallax studies, you really need bespoke hardware. And, again, parallax is the only thing I can think of that benefits from having a telescope much further from Earth than L2.

Offline Hobbes-22

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No, not worth the effort.  VLBI doesn't work well with optical part of the spectrum

Outside of radio, what spectra works best with long baselines?

The longer the wavelength the better. The EHT team works on the edge of what's possible, about 1.3 mm.

The VLT has done some interferometry at IR wavelengths, but that's with 2 telescopes on the same site, combining their signals in the optical domain instead of converting to digital first.

Offline Barley

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There're proposals for putting space telescope in the outer solar system, there're legitimate science reasons for it: A small telescope past Saturn could solve some mysteries of the universe better than giant telescopes near Earth
Don't most planetary probes already contain a small telescope?  Could one be used during the cruise phase or later?  Where there any proposals for Voyager or New Horizons' LORRI after the last encounter?  Or is "past Saturn" an understatement and they really mean "far far past Farfarout"?

Just imagers
And the difference between and imager and a telescope is?

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