Telescopes: From
Galileo to Hi-Tech
Giants
Caty Pilachowski
IUB Astronomy
Mini-University
2005
This sketch of a telescope
was included in a letter
written by Giovanpattista
della Porta in August 1609
Beginnings…
Thomas Harriet’s
Drawings of the
Moon and Sun
Newton and
his Reflecting
Telescope
 Invented by the Scottish
mathematician James
Gregory in the early 1660s
 Newton communicated the
details of his telescope to
the Royal Society in 1670
Telescopes
and
how they
work
to
mirrors
from
lenses…
Technology
moves forward…
The 3.5-meter WIYN telescope
Kitt Peak, Arizona
New Telescope
Technology
 “Fast” mirror
 Lightweight mirror
 Mirror shape controlled
 Mechanically simpler
mount
 Temperature control
Casting
the WIYN
Mirror
Polishing
the WIYN
Mirror
The WIYN New Technology “Dome”




Compact telescope chamber
Open for ventilation
Insulated to keep cool
Heated spaces kept separate
Breaking the “cost curve”
New technology
provides better
performance at
lower cost
WIYN
WIYN TECHNOLOGY
in 6-8 meter telescopes
8-10 Meter
Telescopes Today
Keck Telescopes
Gemini North and
South
ESO’s Very Large
Telescope
Subaru
Hobby-Eberly
Telescope and
SALT
MMT Observatory
Magellan
Large Binocular
Telescope
The Twin
Keck
Telescopes
on Mauna
Kea
Two 10-meter telescopes
“segmented” mirrors
36 hexagonal segments
Keck I in 1993; Keck II in
1996
ESO’s VLT
Cerro Paranal,
Chile
Four 8.2 meter telescopes
 Antu (the Sun)
 Kueyen (the Moon)
 Melipel (the Southern Cross)
 Yepun (Venus - as evening
star)
Subaru
on Mauna Kea
Built by Japan
8.2-meter mirror
supported on air
superb images
New technology telescopes give
new views of the universe
How is the Universe put together?
What is the Universe made of?
Is there life elsewhere?
How is the Universe put together?
 The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe tells us about the state of the
Universe 400,000 years after the Big
Bang.
How did the Universe
evolve from this…
…to this?
Observing the assembly of galaxies
Intergalactic
gas
Galaxy
building blocks
observed with
Hubble
Clumps
concentrated
by dark
matter
lead to
galaxies
Simulation
The cosmic web of intergalactic gas
and galaxies in a young universe
WMAP also provides
evidence of the first stars
 Tiny fluctuations in
polarization
 About 200 million
years after the Big Bang
Can we see the first stars?
Green=hot gas
yellow=stars
To “see” the first stars, we
need a 30-m telescope!
(Barton et al., 2004)
Simulation
4 million LY
hydrogen emission
from hot stars
What is the Universe made of?
The composition of stars and gas:
90% hydrogen atoms
10% helium atoms
Less than 1%
everything else
everything
else
But ordinary matter is
only part of the story…
96% of the Universe is something else
Galaxy interactions require more
mass than we can see
Computer
simulation
The real
thing
Antennae Galaxy (HST)
Dark Matter
 The universe contains additional matter
we cannot see
 Dark matter interacts with normal
matter through gravity
 Dark matter does NOT interact with light
the way the normal matter does
 The Universe contains 5 or 6 times
MORE dark matter than normal matter
All galaxies are embedded in clouds of
dark matter
 We do not know what it is!
“Redshift”
of Galaxies
The spectra of galaxies are shifted to the
red: galaxies are moving away from us.
The farther away a galaxy is, the faster it
recedes from us!
Hubble’s Law
Distance (LY)
3000
2000
1000
Distance - Velocity Relation
0
0
20000
Velocity (km/sec)
40000
The brightness of stellar
explosions tells us how
far away galaxies are
The speeds of very distant
galaxies tell us the Universe
is expanding faster today
than in the past
The Universe is speeding up!
The universe is expanding faster
today than it did in early times
This expansion cannot be caused
by ordinary or dark matter,
which slows expansion.
The acceleration suggests a new
repulsive force (anti-gravity)
acting on very large scales
The New Force Is Called
“Dark Energy”
Dark energy accounts for 73% of the
content of the universe
Dark matter accounts for 23%
The content we’re familiar with is only 4%
What is Dark Energy?
We don’t know
Identifying what dark
energy is requires bigger
telescopes and new
techniques
Is there life elsewhere?
More than 150
planets found
around other
stars
Most are vastly
different from
our Solar System
Artist’s conception of 55 Cancri’s planetary system
Detecting
Planets
detecting planets directly is hard
planets are small and dim
planets are near much brighter stars
detecting planets directly requires
large telescopes (30-meters) and/or
special instruments
The importance
of image quality
text
typical groundbased image
Hubble image
WIYN image
The Ring Nebula
Adaptive Optics – Correcting
distortions caused by the Earth’s
Atmosphere
How does it work???
The
Power
of
Adaptive
Optics
40”
4’
5”
>220 stars in 5”x5”
UH-88”, Courtesy W.Brandner, 0.65” seeing
Gemini N/Hokupa’a-QUIRC (U of H/NSF)
From the
ESO Very
Large
Telescope
An exoplanet
orbits a brown
dwarf “star” at a
distance of
about 55 AU
(the star and planet are
about 200 light years
away)
Imaging planets around other stars
Gemini/Keck AO detection
by Michael Liu (IfA), 2002
“Brown Dwarf”
orbiting a star
at the same
distance as
Saturn from
our Sun
Simulation of the spectra of 55 Cancri’s planets
With a 30-meter
telescope we can
obtain the spectra
of planets around
other stars to search
for the signatures
of life
Simulation by Sudarsky
et al. 2003
Connecting the First Nanoseconds to the Origin of Life




New Telescopes to Answer
New Questions
30-meter telescope
8-meter survey telescope
James Webb Space Telescope
Virtual Observatory
To study the formation
of the first stars and
galaxies will require a
new generation of
larger telescopes
JWST
The giant,
segmented-mirror
telescope
Large-aperture LSST
Synoptic
Survey
Telescope




8.4-meters
Triple-fold optical design
3 billion pixel-camera
30,000 gigabytes each night
Survey the sky each week
Real-time data analysis
3 billion sources + transients
Exploring the
Dark Universe
with LSST
WIYN and
the Future:
ODI
One Degree Imager
1 billion pixels:
32,000 x 32,000 pixels
“on chip” image correction
ODI in the Astronomical Landscape
The best wide-field imager, current or planned
Image quality
median seeing 0.7”
sampling 0.11”
image correction
Time resolution
2-4s readouts
faster for small regions
Diagnostic
Imaging
Information rate 2nd only to LSST (in 2012+)
IU Science
with ODI
Star clusters and stellar
evolution
The history of nearby galaxies
Surveys of faint and distant
galaxies
Beyond 30-meters
ESO’s
Overwhelmingly
Large Telescope
Websites of Interest
 Indiana Astronomical Society
 www.iasindy.org
 National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Image Gallery
 www.noao.edu/image_gallery
 Hubble Space Telescope Images
 www.hubblesite.org
 Amazing Space
 amazing-space.stsci.edu
 NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
www.astrosociety.org
The Stonebelt Stargazers
www.mainbyte.com/stargazers/