- #1
- 131
- 1
Main Question or Discussion Point
How was we able to take the pictures of galaxies?
Kinda, I mean, with all that atmosphere and whatnot it's definitely harder. The good pictures of stuff far away probably come from satellites.You can see galaxies with telescopes on Earth, what do you mean?
Wrong. There are plenty of land-based telescopes that image distant galaxies quite precisely. While it is true that space-based telescopes don't suffer from atmospheric extinction and can gather light of wavelengths that are absorbed by the atmosphere, they are necessarily MUCH smaller than the 'scopes that we can operate on Earth, and their targeting requirements, approved observation-time, etc restrict how much stuff we can image. In contrast, Earth-based telescopes can be used for dedicated survey work. Schmidt telescopes have done all-sky surveys in the Northern and Southern hemispheres for for decades.Kinda, I mean, with all that atmosphere and whatnot it's definitely harder. The good pictures of stuff far away probably come from satellites.
Well, we should be able to dig deeper with the upcoming Webb telescope. It will feature much deeper IR penetration than Hubble. Still, ground-based telescopes will do much of the heavy lifting. We can't launch something equivalent to Keck, LBT, etc, so the eyes on the ground will have the major role. Orbiting instruments have some obvious advantages, but aperture and angular resolution are the domain of ground-based instruments. Adaptive optics are helping operators of ground-based 'scopes get crisper images, and that technology is still improving.Can't argue with the truth.
But I guess you CAN'T get the REALLY far away stuff because it's too red-shifted :P
Does the same phenomenon that causes 'twinkling' stars effect land based telescopes at all?