Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Astronomers find coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth

The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth. No human is thought to have ever been there but it is expected to yield images of the heavens three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground. The researchers pinpointed a site, known simply as Ridge A, that is 4,053m high up on the Antarctic Plateau. It is not only particularly remote but extremely cold and dry. The study revealed that Ridge A has an average winter temperature of minus 70C and that the water content of the entire atmosphere there is sometimes less than the thickness of a human hair. Full article...
A slightly larger telescope than Hubble at this place, could take some images better than Hubble. Though it must be pretty difficult to build here, it must be cheaper than in space.
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4 comments:

  1. pimp-a-lot bear02 September, 2009 23:42

    how can they be sure it's the coldest place on earth?

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  2. cybrbeast03 September, 2009 11:44

    I guess:
    "The joint US-Australian research team combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect astronomy - cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapour, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence."

    One advantage that space telescopes will always have over these though, is that they can take long exposures up to days, like the Hubble Deep Field, which is not possible from Earth because it revolves.

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  3. annom04 September, 2009 10:51

    Cool!

    Slightly larger than what for better images than Hubble?

    I like to see the comparison with James Web. Hubble is 20 years old and the JWT has a 6x larger mirror area.

    Space telescopes will also always have the advantages of receiving EM radiation in all wavelengths. The atmosphere does block some wavelengths. graph

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  4. cybrbeast04 September, 2009 13:25

    I meant a slightly larger telescope than Hubble.

    The atmosphere does indeed block some wavelengths. But a lot of those blocks are caused by water vapor in the air, which is almost non-existent at this site.

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