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The Whole Earth Telescope
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15203 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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4 / 1989 |
2,753 Words |
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Hank Hogan
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For years astronomers have longed for larger and larger telescopes to probe the mysteries of the universe. In their quest, they have reached the limits of glass technology and detoured around those limits by breaking up large telescope mirrors into smaller units that function as one. It has taken some astronomers from Texas, though, to think big and take the idea to a logical extreme--a telescope as big as the earth.
Dubbed the Whole Earth Telescope, this "telescope" is actually a network of cooperating observatories scattered around the world. Through this cooperation, it is possible to keep an object under continuous observation for days or weeks on end. That gives astronomers a powerful new tool to examine the universe, a tool to grapple with problems that were impossible to solve before. And it may provide an answer to some of the most fundamental astronomical questions.
What Is A Whole Earth Telescope?
The Whole Earth Telescope consists of nine observatories located in the United States, Austria, South Africa, France, Chile, Brazil, and India. Most of the funding for the project comes from grants from the National Science Foundation of the United States. It took about two years to set the whole project up, and so far there have been several runs of the network during March and November of last year and March of this year.
The Whole Earth Telescope is the brainchild of R. Edward Nather, an astronomy professor at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). His plan was to get around a problem all astronomers face: sunlight. "If you scrutinize an object from one particular location, when the sun comes up, you've got to quit. And it does that real regularly," says Nather.
Nather's solution was take an old idea--cooperation between observatories--and expand on it. By making sure that all the observatories involved used the same procedures and nearly identical instrumentation, it was possible to create what is essentially one telescope for which the sun never rises.
A conventional multiple mirror telescope, such as at Kitt Peak, Arizona, collects mirrors together to cooperate to get more brightness. But "we deliberately disperse them in space and cooperate in time," Nather says. The observation sites are chosen to provide 24-hour coverage, and if possible, locations in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are selected. That way, if the weather is bad at one site, then another site may be able to continue observations.
The command centers for this world wide effort is Nather's lab, which is perched atop UT's astronomy building in Austin. From there, Nather, his collaborator Don Winget, an associate professor of astronomy at UT, and their graduate students run the show. The lab comes complete with a bed, a worldwide map, and chart showing the time at various points around the globe.
However, Nather and his crew do more than just sit back and run things by remote control. People and equipment are sent to Australia, Chile, and Hawaii, as well as various other sites, for every run. That has led to some problems. In one case, one of the observers sent to Chile ran out of cash and had to persuade airline officials to fly his
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