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 M¢25  Funded By Mahalo ? |  July 13, 2009 04:36 AM

Can we use moon as a base for our next gen space telescope?

As Hubble ST is nearing it's life span, why cant we use our moon for the next gen space telescope? One issue is the distance, maintenance will be expensive. But in the future, we plan to have a permanent base anyway.
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July 13, 2009 09:14 AM
As you point out, the biggest disadvantage to placing an observatory on the moon is the cost. Other difficulties include protecting the telescope's optics from lunar dust as well as the moon's slow rotation; parts of the sky will be invisible for up to two weeks at a time.

Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2014. Unlike Hubble, it is optimized for observations at infrared wavelengths, and for this reason it is being placed over a million miles from Earth, opposite the sun at the semi-stable "L2" point, and is equipped with a heat shield to keep infrared energy from Earth and the sun from overwhelming the telescope's sensitive detectors.
Source(s):
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/orbit.html

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July 14, 2009 12:55 AM
It would be difficult since the moon does not have any atmosphere. We would need a telescope that would look out in another light form, ie uv, gamma, xray to detect objects.

Another problem with having a telescope on the moon is the dust that can occur if a small asteroid were to crash into it. If this happened the telescope would have to go into a mode were it could be protected from all of the particles blasted up out of the moon from the impact.

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July 14, 2009 02:36 AM
Why do you say it would be difficult to use "regular form" of light without an atmosphere?

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July 14, 2009 02:41 AM
Like here on Earth, our atmosphere is what makes us see the 'twinkle' of the stars. Since there is no atmosphere on the moon (hence the space suites, oxygen tanks, etc) stars are not visible from the rock. This is one of the reasons why many people thought the moon landing was a hoax because there was no stars shown when the astronauts were on the moon.

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July 14, 2009 04:52 PM
Are you saying you cant see visible light from space?

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July 14, 2009 05:57 PM
We can see things like the sun and earth, just not stars.

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July 15, 2009 01:53 AM
@daniel8802 you seem to be completely misinformed. Actually you will be able to see even distant faint stars in visible light which cant be seen from the earth. You need to do some studying. Stars are seen in the astronaut pictures because of the focusing issues, not as you think. Please do some research and be clarified yourself. here is a discover blog I found for you.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/07/20/can-i-see-more-stars-from-space/

If I find additional info, I will send it your way.

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