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user-inactivated  ·  2863 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 25, 2016

    What sort of telescope(s) do you have?

I have a 14" Dobsonian, an 80mm refactor, a 5" Cass, a solar scope, a few pairs of binoculars including a 20x80 pair I use to intimidate the public these bad boys, and the club has a pair of 16" scopes that I am trying to get to use for some photography skill building.

    but there are better places to build the world's biggest telescope.

Fun story time. William Herschel was a composer who fell into astronomy and discovered Uranus, became the Royal Astronomer, and really created observational Astronomy. From Ireland and Wales. His son John was an amazing man in his own right. One of the things that John Herschel came up with is putting telescopes on mountains to get over as much air as possible. Before him, telescopes were built where the scientists lived, usually in cities with access to infrastructure.

One of the reasons they build the big scopes in places like Chile is the desert there gets .01" of rain a decade and sits at 14,000 feet which is above roughly 80% of the water vapour in the air. You can do some of the neat infrared stuff there. The top of the volcanoes in Hawaii have a benefit that not only are they at 12,000+ feet but the ocean all around them makes for very still air. Then you can use lasers to wiggle the mirrors and cancel out the interference from the atmosphere.

And to think, the idea of putting the big telescopes on mountains is just about 150 years old.