Questions tagged [space-telescope]
Questions regarding telescopes in orbit around Earth, such as the Hubble Space Telescope.
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What is the gravitational lensing focal distance of a white dwarf star?
I tried looking this up, but I couldn't find any formula on gravitational lensing distance. I know that our Sun's is about 550 AU, though further distances work too, as it's not a single focus due ...
8
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4answers
568 views
Where exactly is the modification that first corrected the spherical aberration in Hubble's primary mirror?
The April 2015 CBS News article How NASA fixed Hubble's flawed vision - and reputation describes the modification taken to the Hubble Space Telescopes by the Space Shuttle that was used to correct for ...
5
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2answers
102 views
What's still needed before we can observe orbits of exomoons thereby weighing exoplanets?
Comments below this answer to How do we weigh a planet? point out that we currently cannot (or at least have not) detect moons around exoplanets, much less measure the sizes and periods of their ...
5
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1answer
168 views
Which space telescope is the most distant?
From the earth, and from the sun. Only interested in active, operational ones.
3
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1answer
177 views
How are space telescopes stabilised to a perfect standstill?
I assume that for space telescopes to get good images, they must be put in perfect standstill, as even the slightest deviation in the viewing angle is amplified by the distance of observed objects, ...
2
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1answer
67 views
What would "the next GAIA"-like instrument be like? Could it simply be a 3 to 5x scaled-up version of the same beautiful system?
This excellent, thorough and well-sourced answer to Has a gravitational microlensing event ever been predicted? If so, has it been observed? mentions several works where hundreds to thousands of ...
5
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1answer
251 views
Why didn't we see those campfires on the Sun until now?
What is it about its optics and instrumentation (aperture, sensors, filters), being in space and distance from the Sun on 30 May 2020 that allowed Solar Orbiter's HRIEUV telescope to see something ...
4
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1answer
105 views
Has GAIA learned anything about General Relativity looking near Jupiter? (Gerry Gilmore: "oblate rotating mass moving in a deeper (Solar) potential")
From Gerry Gilmore (2018) Gaia: 3-dimensional census of the Milky Way Galaxy
4.4 Fundamental physics
Relativistic effects are highly significant for Gaia measurement accuracy, with
tests of General ...
11
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1answer
342 views
What are the next planned space telescopes?
We've had hubble for two decades. Its become the most famous space telescope, and lately Kepler seems to be running for the second place. Are there any more powerful, better telescopes planned for ...
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4answers
583 views
Why not use only one support vane for the secondary mirror, to avoid multiple diffraction spikes?
Each vane holding the secondary mirror in front of the primary causes a diffraction spike. Couldn't the secondary mirror be held with only one vane?
If stability is the issue, couldn't it be ...
5
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1answer
103 views
What (if any) capabilities of Hubble are unique and irreplaceable? What can it do that can't be done by any other ground or space-based telescope?
It's impossible to summarize in an SE post the depth and breadth of the contributions to science made using the Hubble Space Telescope.
Above the atmosphere it has
access to an extremely dark and ...
4
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0answers
90 views
Deciding optical factors between a refractive and reflective space telescope optics as a function of aperture? (visible light)
Reading Yale News' Lighting a path to Planet Nine:
To detect objects that are otherwise undetectable, Rice and Laughlin employ a method called “shifting and stacking.” They “shift” images from a ...
3
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1answer
157 views
How will microshutter arrays be used in the James Webb and future space telescopes?
Question: How will microshutter arrays be used in the James Webb and future space telescopes? Are they acting as a sort of moving pinhole or slit, or is the pattern more complicated, like a coded ...
2
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1answer
148 views
Can the WISE telescope detect black holes?
Black holes are hot, aren't they? With its infrared scan, could the WISE telescope also detect a black hole? The hypothetical planet beyond the Kuiper belt could actually be a primordial black hole. ...
1
vote
1answer
95 views
When thermal infrared space telescopes spot asteroids, are they seeing the body's own thermal emission, or reflected TIR from the Sun?
From the Space SE question Why has the Earth-Sun libration point L1 been chosen over L2 for NEOCam to detect new NEOs?:
above: Profoundly not-to-scale illustration of NEOCam in an orbit around the ...
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1answer
44 views
Did the Spectr-R space-based radio telescope use on-board accelerometer to measure non-gravitational acceleration for baseline correction?
This answer to Why is space-based VLBI scattering sub-structure "Hopefully, a new promising tool to reconstruct the true image of observed background target(s)"? summarizes the contribution ...
40
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4answers
9k views
Why are we building larger land-based telescopes instead of launching larger ones into space?
This question is a follow-up to Do bigger telescopes equal better results?
How much bigger does a ground-based mirror have to be to match what a space-based one can do? I guess I'm asking primarily ...
7
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2answers
273 views
Can the Gaia telescope detect small temporarily captured asteroids near its Lagrange orbit?
The Gaia space telescope is in a Lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2. The orbit period is about 180 days and the size of the orbit is 263,000 x 707,000 x 370,000 km. It has been ...
4
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2answers
263 views
Why (the heck) is the basic angle of GAIA 106.5°?
This answer to Why does the Gaia space telescope have two main mirrors says:
According to the GAIA FAQs which does an excellent job: http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/faqs:
Why is there an angle of ...
22
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4answers
8k views
Why is Starlink polluting the night sky a big concern if we have space telescopes?
There's a lot of concern in the Astronomy community over the deployment of Starlink satellites. For a good discussion, see the related question How will Starlink affect observational astronomy?
But ...
21
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2answers
925 views
Parking a telescope at a Lagrange point: is this a good idea from a debris point of view?
The James Webb space telescope is supposed to be located at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point.
Do we expect the region around that point to have a higher concentration of space debris, asteroids, dust,...
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3answers
227 views
Why are telescopes positioned in Lagrange points?
In this Wikipedia article about the list of space telescopes to be launched (which I assume is exhaustive), of the 11 telescopes yet to be launched, 6 will be positioned at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange ...
3
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1answer
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Are X-ray telescopes with glancing angle surfaces basically "funny-looking" Cassegrain telescopes mathematically?
In this answer I included the image below of a reflective X-ray telescope. It is made from two elements; the first is concentric shells of glancing (high incidence) angle paraboloidal surfaces, and ...
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3answers
2k views
Is the measurement of distance and position of remote celestial bodies accurate?
Considering that light is affected by gravity, how accurate are measurements of distant stars and galaxies?
When light passes through objects with great mass, such as Jupiter size planets, stars, or ...
8
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1answer
337 views
Is there a cosmic, rather than technological, upper limit to what a telescope can resolve?
Space radio interferometers could have a baseline of millions of kilometers, but is there a point where a larger baseline doesn't improve the resolution anymore because the photons observed are ...
7
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1answer
439 views
How could a 20 inch space telescope "be able to make out Earth-size planets" orbiting Alpha Centauri?
The NY Times article Telescope to Seek Earthlike Planet in Alpha Centauri System describes a proposed effort to put a telescope into orbit fairly quickly with a narrowly defined purpose - to look for ...
4
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1answer
110 views
Why does Nancy Grace Roman = 100 × Hubble? Why is the new space telescopes wide field camera so much wider than the old one's?
The title of the WFIRST project description (before it was named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope) is The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope: 100 Hubbles for the 2020s.
Question: Why does Nancy ...
3
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1answer
48 views
Why wasn't CHEOPS data taken during passage through the South Atlantic Anomaly downlinked in this case, resulting in gaps in photometry?
Section 4.1.2. CHEOPS in Six transiting planets and a chain of Laplace resonances in TOI-178 says
Due to the low-Earth orbit of CHEOPS, the spacecraft-target line of sight was interrupted by Earth ...
3
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1answer
599 views
What are the differences between TESS and PLATO exoplanet telescopes?
Within a year now it has been decided to launch TESS in 2017 and PLATO in 2024, space telecopes of NASA and ESA. They seem to have very similar science goals, both searching for transiting Earth sized ...
2
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1answer
60 views
Limits of space telescope?
Watching this video describing the "next generation" space telescope, it seems like the biggest mirror will be ~6 meters in diameter.
Theoretically, if a telescope was built in space instead ...
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0answers
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How do HabEx's internal coronagraph and external starshade work together and complement each other? What is it that each can do that the other can't?
Limits of space telescope? links to the video 4 Future Space Telescopes NASA wants to build and that page links to The New Great Observatories. These cover the four space-based instruments proposed by ...
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1answer
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Why would a tidally-locked rocky planet have a first-order spherical harmonic surface temperature distribution?
The new Letter to Nature Absence of a thick atmosphere on the terrestrial exoplanet LHS 3844b (also ArXiv) analyzes the thermal infrared light curve from the system (about 4.5 to 5.5 um). The planet ...
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1answer
151 views
How are "parallel fields" implemented on the Hubble Space Telescope?
The Phys.org news item Hubble is the ultimate multitasker: Discovering asteroids while it's doing other observations mentions the Hubble Space Telescope's use of parallel fields:
A couple years ago, ...
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0answers
86 views
What is an "Off Rowland-circle Telescope"?
The NASA Goddard news item NASA to Demonstrate New Star-Watching Technology with Thousands of Tiny Shutters says:
The technology, called the Next-Generation Microshutter Array (NGMSA), will fly for ...
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1answer
170 views
Does this CHEOPS first light image imply bad astronomy?
@KeithMcClary's comment under lousy mirror corrected by software links to Bad Astronomy's First Light for the Exoplanet Hunter Mission CHEOPS Goes Tetrahedral which shows the image below.
I understand ...
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32 views
What kind of space telescope could best take advantage of orbiting far from the Sun?
While Hubble has provided an astounding amount of science from low Earth orbit, one of the reasons it was put in LEO was to be readily accessible for service and upgrades by the Space Shuttle.
JWST ...