Rise of the Super Telescopes: Why We Build Them

One night 400 years ago, Galileo pointed his 2 inch telescope at Jupiter and spotted 3 of its moons. On subsequent nights, he spotted another, and saw one of the moons disappear behind Jupiter. With those simple observations, he propelled human understanding onto a path it still travels.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Rise of the Super Telescopes: Why We Build Them

One night 400 years ago, Galileo pointed his 2 inch telescope at Jupiter and spotted 3 of its moons. On subsequent nights, he spotted another, and saw one of the moons disappear behind Jupiter. With those simple observations, he propelled human understanding onto a path it still travels.

more…

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The Rise of the Super Telescopes Series:

Hubble
The Giant Magellan Telescope
The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope
The 30 Meter Telescope
The European Extremely Large Telescope
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope
The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor

I would have started my list with Keck
And definitely not skipped the VLT, very large telescope, with its interferometer capabilities making it effectively much larger.

I think some of these don’t exist. Is it true that only one of “The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope”, “The 30 Meter Telescope” and “The European Extremely Large Telescope” is being funded?

“The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope” is, hopefully, the successor to the enormously successful “Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer”. With a diameter of 2.4 metres rather than 0.4 metres.

I don’t know “The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor”.

Another super telescope “The Large Binocular Telescope” has been a painful disappointment to me. I had great hopes for it.