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Will Future Tech Ever Allow A Portable Hubble?


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This is a complete random question, but I thought it might be fun. :icon_scratch: Can any of the more clever people amongst us ever see a possible way we could have a portable telescope as powerful as hubble in our back gardens? It could be hundreds of years in the future. Or is it simple physics and aperture size that will always be the deciding factor in telescope designs?

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the only way I can see it happening is if they can put some cheap ones up there and rent time out to astronomers down here. the problem with big scopes is atmospheric distortion which is why all the biggest scopes are at high altitude and preferably stable weather conditions.

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the only way I can see it happening is if they can put some cheap ones up there and rent time out to astronomers down here. the problem with big scopes is atmospheric distortion which is why all the biggest scopes are at high altitude and preferably stable weather conditions.

Yeah, that would be a cool idea.

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The next generation of proposed ground base telescopes are much more "powerful" than Hubble (a spece based telescope).

e.g. the E-ELT

With a 40m main mirror, not really going to fit in your back garden though....:icon_scratch:

We can dream about being able to obtain active and adaptive optics systems for ourselves in the not too distant future. Start reading up on those for starters.

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As I understand it, Hubble is not particularly powerful. There are other ground-based scopes of 2.4m but they have to contend with distortion from the atmosphere.

The trouble with optics is you can't really mess with the simple rules. Gathering an area of light bigger than your pupils and bringing it to sharp focus requires aperture and lenses. So your portable Hubble would still need something 2.4m across and matching mirrors or lenses to get a usable focal length. It's not going to fit in a rucksack.

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Wouldn't the future lie in arrays of smaller scopes with adaptive optics.

I have no idea how much it costs to make these things work (I suspect it's a lot), but hopefully in the future the technology will become cheap enough to be used more widely.

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Whole point about Hubble is that it's above the atmosphere. Maybe one day there will amateurs launching their own satellites and some people will put telescopes in them.

On the ground there may in future be amateurs using adaptive optics, long baseline interferometry etc.

Who knows, we might even see lights getting turned off at night, then we could all enjoy the stuff with our own eyes.

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Hmm, well - the only other way I know of focusing light without mirrors or lenses (which just have to be big to collect enough photons) is to do it gravitationally. So I guess if you could manufacture your own personal, very strong gravitational field ...

Might have some undesirable consequences though!

NigelM

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Are you willing to have a 2.4 meter and 2 stories high telescope in your garden?

(Tongue in cheek)

I'd have a few problems dragging it out the garden shed, let alone mounting it on a tripod. Come to think about it, I'd probably need to buy a new tripod.

Still, on the plus side, nobody would steal it and it would probably be fairly stable in the wind.

Downside? The adaptive optics would mean I'd need another power tank and an extra USB port. Might even have to stretch to some new trellis fencing panels...

Sigh....will it never end? :icon_scratch:

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There are theorized optics that use multi spectrum lasers to capture photons that are directed onto silicone circuits, providing a very highly focused clear picture. The next geration of telescope probably won't use mirrors as there are more efficient ways of gavering light. However very very expensive techniques, so I doubt we will see that technology around for a while.

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