PPARC news release

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

When I read

I thought: "Hey, didn't they told us the same when they wanted 'Hubble'?"

It would be great if we really would build this thing. It's really incredible how telescope technology has advanced in the last 30 years.

__________________
"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

And what can you do with OWL [Overwhelmingly Large Telescope]?

See science case at ESO (the page is still under construction, though).

It may be able to
- confirm that universe has extra dimensions and that physical constants are actually varying
- see the first stars
- see the earliest galaxies and study the evolution of galaxies
- image extrasolar planets, including terrestrial planets around nearby stars
- make detailed observations of Solar System bodies, like following cloud formations, or take detailed pictures of planets, moons, and asteroids
- make discoveries we didn't anticipated

See also this PDF: Critical science with the largest telescopes: science drivers for a 100m ground-based optical-IR telescope (I don't know why the article text looks garbled, haven't done that before.)

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Don't all the theories (such as String) predict the extra dimensions to be curled up to be extremely small to be even visible to the most powerful microsope technically feasible today? So how can we find the extra dimensions using super telescopes? Indirectly, may be? If so, how?

I'm confused, so is the Extremely Large Telescope basically the new name for the OWL project?

Watch out for

Euro50,
CalTech got a grant to design a 30-meter optical telescope
Improved-VLT
Terrestrial Planet Finder
JWST a space telescope from NASA-ESA
Extremely Large Telescope (ELT)
Darwin planet hunter
CELT
OWL.

NASA has plans for big Space telescopes. Europeans say 50-100 m segmented group telescope using adaptive optics could be built within a decade for a cost of around 1 billion Euros, the Euro-50 report
Large PDF file
http://www.astro.lu.se/%7Etorben/eur...ite_book80.pdf
big download- 50 MB of PDF info
The telescope may be placed on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands

ELT is a common used phrase to describe a Telescope design that will be much larger than the 'Big' Telescopes used today, or will have much better observation due to space technology

A design for a ground based ELT would be much larger than the big Hobby-Eberly in Texas, larger than William Herschel in La Palma - Canary Islands, bigger than Bolshoi Teleskop Azimutalnyi Nizhny Arkhyz Russia, and an ELT would be much larger the big Japanese Subaru-scope from Hawaii.

see the telescopes I've mentioned above

And with the spate of telescope construction, that list was already out of date! The BTA (largest one I've personally observed with) now ranks number 15 worldwide in aperture! The Keck twins continue to reign at 10 meters for single apertures, with the Gran Telescopio de Canarias perhaps about to edge them out by a few cm. The effective areas of the HET and its southern counterpart SALT are around 9.2 meter. Then there are Subaru, the four VLT units, and the Gemini twins at 8.1-8.3 meters (shorty to be joined by the two mirrors of the LBT in Arizona), and a gaggle of 6.5-meter mirrors in Arizona and Chile. Only at that point do we get to the BTA and the Palomar 5-meter. Things have changed a lot since I was in school (this statement made pursant to the Back in My Day act of Nineteen Ought Eight). Who'd have though the growth would be so rapid after nearly 30 years with Palomar a tthe top of the list, and the BTA managing almost 15? Keck has been at the top of the heap that long, but the new impetus for really gigantic telescopes is gathering and 20 meters effective aperture is not that far off. Now if adaptive optics can only keep pace...

Those Euros are talking about OWL at some Belgian speech

Space Days 2006
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=38883
Morning
09.00 - 09.15 Welcome Speeches
09.15 - 11.00 ESO (European Southern Observatory) conference & debate:
The Extremely Large Telescope - ESO's OWL project, plans and overall requirements
Speakers
* Roberto Gilmozzi, Head of Telescope Division, ESO
* Philippe Dierickx, OWL Project Leader, ESO
* Robert Fischer, Contract and Procurement, ESO

If I understand correctly ELT is a study which will incorporate the Euro50 as well as the OWL proposal. They'll report in 2008.
We can't have both. Shoots.

__________________
Join the Illuminati

I would rather have one actual 50 meter scope than a dozen studies for 100 meter scopes.

With so many new ones, any dumping of wimpy 1 or 2 meter scopes expected? You will tell me, right?

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Do they already have funding to build these?
Or are they only producing a pile of memos?

__________________
"Who does not know anything, must believe everything."
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830-1916

very good question, I think some are in study phase

in design phase and implementation phase are space based telescope like JWST which is being built right now, however the ground-based telescopes like Keck outrigger scopes got cut in the recent NASA budget ( along with other projects like Dawn )

Here is a website with links to big telescope design studies all over the world. It is from the website looking at (2) 30m scopes: the GSMT and the TMT.

http://www.aura-nio.noao.edu/other/other_concepts.html

enjoy!

My what big eyes they have.

Nice link. Welcome to BAUT!!

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

I wrote an article on Extremely Large Telescopes for the March 2006 issue of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society Newsletter. Should be interesting to anyone on this thread. You can download the issue in PDF format.

__________________
Don't try this at home - We're what you call "professionals" - MythBusters.

Thanks Tim, that's a great article. Note that there is also a picture of a handsome rascal with a bag ot telescope parts on the bottom of page 8.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Thanks for that, I wonder if they will really get built ? I'd imagine that OWL would be too expensive

Considering the spending on some other science projects it is
not completely out of the question.
In the end politicians have to make the decision, and for them
2008 is way in the future.

__________________
Join the Illuminati