3 ms·
Perhaps Lockheed should make a telescope that’s so big, it spans 45 States?
by blackrock 6y ago
Perhaps Lockheed should make a telescope that’s so big, it spans 45 States?
- lkbm 6y agoHow spread out can the receivers in a Very Very Large Array be? My understanding is that with radiotelescopy they can be widely dispersed, but I'm far from an expert. Really, you just need manufacturing/contractors in many places. This part built in Pennsylvania, that one in Michigan.
- avz 6y agoVLBI arrays [1] are networks of radio telescopes that combine data from multiple instruments spread out over a continent or the whole planet. A network like this emulates a continent-size or a planet-size radio telescope and produces radioastronomy's highest resolution images. The most sensitive VLBI array is the European VLBI network [2] which spans the sort of scales you have in mind. A VLBI array can also incorporate space-based nodes, see e.g. [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferometry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferome... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_VLBI_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_VLBI_Network [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HALCA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HALCA