5 ms·
Amazing how a few meters of mirror can make out objects billions of light-years distant. Yes it's big - insofar as human-built telescopes have been - yet is so
by ctdonath 5y ago
Amazing how a few meters of mirror can make out objects billions of light-years distant. Yes it's big - insofar as human-built telescopes have been - yet is so relatively minuscule per what it observes. Having gone from first flight to JWST in such a short time is staggering (Wright Bros 120 years ago - I've been alive nearly half that time); how soon will we achieve orders-of-magnitude bigger telescopes? say, multiple 100x-wider JWSTs operating from multiple LaGrange points? Think big!
- wlesieutre 5y agoIn a slightly different vein, ESA's Gaia mission measured the distances to billions of stars by looking at how their position shifts as we orbit from one side of the sun to the other. Not taking highly detailed images like JWST, but in some ways you can think of it as a telescope the size of Earth's orbit. https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/Parallax https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/P... https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/gaia-makes-most-accurate-3d-map-of-the-milky-way-yet/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/gaia-makes-most-a...
- SixDouble5321 5y agoThe sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars. -Carl Sagan
- ctdonath 5y agoAnd that path currently goes thru an autist welding up rockets in tents on a beach.