4 ms·

There might be enough use demand to saturate multiple gigantic telescopes. The US should fund at least one as well.

• brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Technically a bigger telescope has more throughput, right? It can expose the same spot for less time, then move onto the next observation.
  • antognini 3y ago
    Generally there is a lower bound because it takes a few minutes to slew to a new spot on the sky and stabilize. Very large telescopes are slower, so this will take longer, possibly 5--10 minutes. So you typically want to spend at least 20 minutes per target so that most of your time is spent observing rather than slewing. That's why there's still a lot of demand for 1-m class telescopes. There are also issues with saturation. Large telescopes simply cannot observe brighter targets because they saturate the detectors too quickly. (This is not so much of a problem for deep field objects since none of them have high surface brightness anyway, but can be a problem for brighter stars.)
  • db48x 3y ago
    Only if it were completely automated, or run by the full–time staff instead of by visiting astronomers. Plus, even if a new telescope is 10× better than the old one, nobody will agree to observe for 1/10th the time; it would negate the advantage of the new scope.