Are the telescopes on the moon?



Astronauts aboard Apollo 16 installed a linear telescope called the Far Ultraviolet Camera/ Spectrograph on the moon in April 1972. The gold-plated 22-kg device mounted on a tripod was the first telescope used to make astronomical observations and take photographs of Earth in ultraviolet light from the surface of another planetary body. The astronauts brought back the film, leaving behind the telescope on the moon.



The Chinese were the next to install a robotic UV telescope on the moon in 2013, which is still functional. Operated remotely from Earth, it has observed stars, galaxies, quasars, novae, etc. Now NASA has plans of planting radio telescopes on the far side of the moon. Scientists believe that the far side of the moon being shielded from the radio signals of Earth is perfect for radio astronomy.



On Earth, there are many obstacles to observing the skies – our atmosphere, light pollution, weather, etc. In contrast, space telescopes like the Hubble and Chandra have given us brilliant images of the universe. So a telescope on the moon seems the most logical step.



An observatory on the moon has the advantage of 14 days of continuous darkness with no atmosphere or light pollution. This ensures uninterrupted and clear observation of astronomical objects.



On the other hand, the lack of atmosphere means that the linear surface experiences extreme temperature differences – the temperature can be as high as 100ºC  during the daytime and -173ºC  at night. The telescope has to be specially engineered to withstand such temperature extremes. The moon also experiences many moonquakes. Lastly, building an observatory on the moon is prohibitively expensive – it can cost more than $1 billion.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

No comments

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.
To leave a comment you must approve it via e-mail, which will be sent to your address after submission.