from the looks-like-his-career-is-looking-up dept.
Spanish astronomer Xavier Barcons took over the reins this month of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the world's foremost international astronomy organization. It is currently building the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), destined to be the world's largest when completed in 2024.
In the 1980s Barcons set up the first x-ray astronomy group in Spain at the University of Cantabria. He is a specialist on active galactic nuclei, superbright galactic cores thought to be caused by giant black holes sucking in and heating up quantities of gas and dust. To study them, he's been heavily involved in European x-ray space telescopes such as XMM-Newton and the forthcoming Athena, due for launch in 2028. Barcons has also worked at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, Spain's Council for Scientific Research, and served as chair of ESO's council from 2012 to 2014.
He joins ESO in a period of high activity as the organization embarks on the E-ELT, its biggest project so far. But a shadow hangs over the €1.1 billion facility: Because of a shortfall in funding, the ESO council has only approved a first phase of construction, which will produce a working telescope but with certain desired components delayed until extra funding can be found. Those components include 210 of the 798 segments that make up the 39-meter main mirror, back-up mirror segments, some lasers for the adaptive optics system, and a few instrument components.
Meanwhile, ESO's current main facility, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Cerro Paranal in Chile, continues to be the world's most productive ground-based instrument, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a new radio observatory built jointly with North American and East Asian countries, is opening up this previously little-studied window on the universe.
European Southern Observatory
Very Large Telescope
Atacama Large Millimeter Array
Extremely Large Telescope
Giant Magellan Telescope
Thirty Meter Telescope
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by VLM on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:55PM (2 children)
If this was an AMA I'd ask how something that large and floopy deals with seismographic noise and occasional distant earthquakes.
Do you just assume that sometimes its floopy and don't take data then, or do they have some kind of adaptive optics?
I mean, anyone who's ever used a home telescope has the experience of some dude walks by on the patio and the image gets all bouncy, and its not like the materials they're using are better, they're just bigger, so you'd expect the structure on average to be floopier than a home scope mount.
I would imagine something big enough has to deal with the speed of sound in materials, so a wave hits here and it takes a measurable amount of time to wiggle over there.
I suspect its an interesting engineering challenge?
Also this story is sad, in that it use "European" multiple times and European civilization is being wiped out. Nothing like this will be possible in a couple decades in the future province of Northwest Syria or North Africa or the euro caliphate or whatever it'll be called, obviously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:05PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:00PM
Quoth TFS, not even TFA: "lasers for the adaptive optics system"
> [racist drivel]
I was going to enquire how you manage to live with yourself. However, the stupidity you demonstrate provides a simple answer to that question.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves