StarMen76

When it comes to amateur astronomy, there will be many new opportunities. Meteorites on a strict schedule, along with all sorts of starbursts. Scientists will report to amateurs about more phenomena, just like what is happening with the weather now. The exact appearance of new bright comets will be predicted decades in advance.

As you know, this month the most famous comet passed the aphelion of its orbit and began to approach the Earth. Her next return is expected in 2061. I suggest you think about what astronomy will be like this year. My thoughts. Large observatories in inhabited colonies on the Moon and Mars. The Hyper Gaia Project is progressing well and is close to cataloging 75 percent of all the stars in our galaxy. Several of next NASA's Great Observatories were launched on Starships, for example a 10-meter telescope to continue the main scientific tasks of the Webb telescope. On Earth, construction of the international 100-meter telescope OWL is nearing completion.

I agree, this is important. If we send Gaia to Alpha Centauri, we will be able to measure the distance to the most distant galaxies. This is important, since astronomers still use indirect estimates to measure extragalactic distances, such as Cepheids or supernovae. Nobody knows how accurate this is. But Gaia only has a meter telescope and sees very few stars and galaxies. According to calculations, in order to catalog half of the stars in our galaxy, it is necessary to observe up to magnitude 27. We need to know about all the stars in the Milky Way. For this reason, Hyper Gaia must be observed in the near-infrared, like the Webb telescope. It is in this range that red dwarfs are brightest and we can observe them through dust clouds. The infrared range reduces the requirements for the precision of the mirror surface. Everything is simple here. Most likely, by mid-century, most data transmission from spacecraft will switch from radio to laser. This will radically reduce the area of solar panels. Probably by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Thousands of Starlink satellites already use lasers to transmit data. Or compare the field of view of radio telescopes and the diameter of a laser beam on the Moon. The difference is close to a thousand times. There the limit is close to magnitude 6. To cross Gaia, it is necessary to reduce the duration of exposures. This is a common phenomenon in astronomy. For example, for superproject LSST this limit is close to magnitude 16.

For a significant breakthrough in astrometry, the sensitivity of the new telescope should really be close to 30 magnitude. For Hipparchus the limit of sensitivity was close to magnitude 10, for Gaia it was close to magnitude 20. The next step should be all-celestial astrometry at magnitude 30. While such objects are available only to Hubble and Webb, famous Halley’s Comet is now approximately the same magnitude.

I read that Gaia, compared to Hipparchus, increased the number of known parallaxes by 10 thousand times in 20 years. Is there a project that will increase Gaia's results again by 10 thousand times in another 20 years? Around the middle of the century? Has anyone heard of such a future project? I calculated that if to increase the sensitivity of Gaia by 10 thousand times, then its size Gaia must be increased exactly 100 times. Then such a telescope will catalog stars 30th magnitude. The mass of such a telescope should be almost a about 200 thousand tons. This does not seem fantastic if you look at the successes of SpaceX. The final mass of their Starlink constellation is estimated at 60 thousand tons. Of course, with new technologies, the mass of the telescope should be less. Everyone knows that a square meter of the Webb telescope mirror weighs an order of magnitude less than a square meter of the Hubble telescope mirror. I assume that such a telescope will not be too expensive in terms of financial costs. The Hipparchus and Gaia projects are equal in cost to each other, although the second observatory received a thousand times more data.