Oct 18 (Reuters) – Here is a look at a new generation of
telescopes which scientists hope will help answer fundamental
questions about the origin and evolution of the universe and
whether there is life beyond our planet.
* SQUARE KILOMETRE ARRAY (SKA) RADIO TELESCOPE: Earlier this
month, the Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP)
started peering into the universe from a remote cattle station
in Western Australia state. With 36 antennas, ASKAP is the first
building block in the SKA which will be based in Australia and
South Africa. It should be fully operational by 2024.
* The new telescope will be 50 times more sensitive and
10,000 times faster than any other telescope on the planet,
according to the international consortium funding the $2 billion
project. The SKA central computer will have the processing power
of about one hundred million PCs and will use enough optical
fibre to wrap twice around the Earth. It will generate enough
raw data to fill 15 million 64 GB iPods every day.
* EUROPEAN EXTREMELY LARGE TELESCOPE (E-ELT): The E-ELT will
be located on a mountain at an altitude of 3,060 metres in the
central part of Chile’s Atacama Desert. It will aim to track
down Earth-like planets around other stars in so-called
“habitable zones” and will also carry out “stellar archaeology”
in nearby galaxies.
* It is expected to have a mirror 40 metres in diameter,
covering a field on the sky about a tenth the size of the full
Moon. The primary mirror will consist of almost 800 segments,
each 1.4 metres wide, but only 50 mm thick. The E-ELT’s
instruments will allow astronomers to probe the earliest stages
of the formation of planetary systems and to detect water and
organic molecules around stars in the making.
* THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE: An international
collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and
the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Webb will have a large mirror,
6.5 metres (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a
tennis court. It will be in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1
million miles) from the Earth. Named after a NASA administrator
who oversaw the early Apollo programmes, the project is a
replacement for the Hubble Telescope. It is due to enter into
service in 2018.
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