Telescopes

How do telescopes help us learn about the universe?

A telescope is characterized by its diameter, D

• Telescopes collect vastly more light flux than our eyes

 light-collecting area, proportional to D2
• Telescopes can see much more detail than our eyes
 angular resolution, proportional to 1/D
• Telescopes/instruments can detect radiation that is
invisible to our eyes (e.g., infrared, ultraviolet)
• Bigger is better! More light collected and the images
are sharper with larger telescopes, but subject to the
limitation imposed by the atmosphere for telescopes
at high-altitude ground-based observing sites.
 Hale 1949

Keck1 HST 1990

Keck2 1995
MMT
HET 2000
Gemini (x2)
VLT (x4) Spitzer 2005
Magellan
SALT 2010
LBT (x2)
GTC JWST 2015
LSST
2020

GMT
CELT
E-ELT

Ground-based Space-based
Planned 21st century 20-60 meter telescopes will cost about $1 billion,
not out of line with the most ambitious 19th and 20th century projects.
• Plot of largest optical/infrared
telescope size vs. time reveals
an exponential growth rate.
– Remarkable given all the
various social, economic,
and technical factors.
• Extrapolating from Keck 10 m:
• 10 m

Log10 collecting area (meters2)

1993
• 25 m 2034
• 50 m 2065
• 100 m 2097
– History doesn’t explain how
future gains will be made.
Technical innovation is still
essential for progress. Courtesy J. Nelson
 Angular Resolution

• This is the minimum

angular separation
that the telescope
can distinguish.
• For the naked eye it
is about 1 minute of
arc, 1/60 of degree.
• The normal limit due
to turbulence in the
atmosphere is 0.5-1
seconds of arc.
• Diffraction limit isn’t
realized for D > 0.3m.
Telescope Resolution

Resolution is improved with a

larger mirror (up to the limit
imposed by the atmosphere)
and also by observing shorter
wavelengths of light/radiation.
Rule of Thumb:
Imaging angular resolution of 0.1“
Diffraction limit of 1.3m telescope
Can resolve size of 100 AU at 10 l.y.
 Basic Telescope Design
• Refracting: lenses
• Limited by chromatic
aberration and sagging

Yerkes 1-m refractor

Refracting telescope
 Basic Telescope Design
• Reflecting: mirrors
• Most research telescopes
today are reflecting designs

Reflecting telescope Gemini North 8-m

Keck I and Keck II, Mauna Kea, Hawaii
Limitations
 Observing problems due to Earth environment

1. Light Pollution
Major Observatory Sites

8.4-m LSST 2018

6x8.4-m GMT 2019
2. Turbulence causes twinkling  blurs images.

Star imaged with a 2m A CCD image from the

ground-based telescope Hubble Space Telescope
3. Atmosphere absorbs most of EM spectrum, including
all the UV and X-ray, and most infrared wavelengths
 SCALING LAW DATA
OPTICAL
RADIO
Telescopes also follow
OPTICAL ENDOSTRUCTURES a cost “scaling law”
TELESCOPE DIAMETER (m)
4 10 20 30 100
2.4 Recent history: Cost ~ D2.3
2.2
This is because a mirror
log TELESCOPE COST(M$,1999$)

2.0 H A LE
S UB 100 M$
DS N
1.8
VL
K E CK

B ON N
scales according to area
(C OL)
1.6
MMT-2
T GE M
ENDOSTRUCTURE
or D2 while the building
(MA G)
1.4 MMT-1
TELESCO PES scales as volume or D3.
S

N TT
RE

1.2 HE T SMT
TU

1.0
Other complex issues
DIO
UC
TR

0.8
RA

are vibrations, flexure,

OS

0.6
EX

NANJING and the increasing size

0.4
0.2
and cost of instruments.
0 1.0 2.0
log TELESCOPE DIAMETER (m)
Solutions
 Frontier Technology

The data rate for the Large Synoptic

Survey Telescope is 1 Gb/s, or 20 Tb
a night, all of which will be reduced
in real time and put out on the Web

The spun-cast 8.4m LSST

mirror is so accurate that
if it were the size of the
US the biggest bumps on
it would be one inch high
Steward Observatory Mirror Lab
MMT 6.5 m telescope
Mt. Hopkins, Arizona
Magellan 6.5 m telescopes
Las Campanas, Chile
 Large Binocular Telescope
Mt. Graham, Arizona

Currently this is the world’s most powerful telescope;

two 8.4 meter mirrors, equivalent to a 12 m telescope
 Bird’s Eye View of LBT

This is the largest

mirror ever made. So is this.
Giant Magellan Telescope
 Honeycomb Sandwich Mirrors

top view

side view
(section)

Honeycomb sandwich structure makes the mirror stiff yet

light, and it can follow changing night-time air temperature.
 Making a GMT Mirror: Mold Assembly

Tops of boxes follow

shape of mirror surface;
no two are identical.

Machine and install

1681 ceramic fiber
boxes inside a silicon
carbide tub.
 Loading Glass

Close furnace, prepare

to melt and spin.

Inspect, weigh, and load

18 tons of borosilicate
glass in ~5 kg blocks.
 Glass Melting

Heat to 1160˚C, spin at 4.9 rpm, hold four hours to

allow glass to fill mold. Cool rapidly to 900˚C then
slowly for 3 months, 2.4˚C/day through annealing.

UV cameras mounted in
the furnace lid monitor the
casting.
First GMT segment. The others are off-axis parabaloids (challenging!)
The stress-lap polishing of the surface is accurate to one millionth of an inch.
The mirror forms images so sharp you could read a newspaper from 5 miles.
 Mirror being installed in
support cell at the telescope

Second LBT mirror on

its way up Mt. Graham
Adaptive Optics
 How is technology revolutionizing astronomy?
Adaptive Optics
• Rapid changes in mirror shape compensate for atmospheric
turbulence and allow telescopes to approach diffraction limit.

Without adaptive optics With adaptive optics

To gain the diffraction-limited imaging potential of a large telescope
a light secondary mirror must have its shape adjusted at 50-100 Hz
to take out wave-front variations caused by atmospheric turbulence.

View of convex rear surface of the first LBT secondary shell, showing
aluminum coating for capacitive sensors and magnets for actuators.
 Figuring of the Optical Surface

Figuring is done with a 30 cm diameter stressed lap. Stressed lap bends

actively to follow curvature variations over aspheric surface. A stiff lap
smoothes out small-scale surface errors as if the mirror were spherical.
Binary Star: AO on (left), and off (right), where
the active control gives more than an order of
magnitude improvement in angular resolution.
M92: HST (left) and AO on the ground (right),
with exposure times scaled to control for the
larger telescope used for ground-based data.
The Sharpest Image Ever Made
Interferometers
 Interferometry
• Coherently combine waves from separate telescopes to
reach the resolution equivalent to the largest separation.

Interferometers give big gains in

resolution more than sensitivity.

Signals have to be combined in

phase, or coherently, requiring
registration to a fraction of the
wavelength. This is much harder
for light than for radio waves.
Radio Interferometer
 Atacama Large
Millimeter Array

Completion due
in 2016, with 66
antennas of 12m
and 7m diameter
at an altitude of
5000m in Chile’s
Atacama Desert.
Optical Interferometer
 Detectors
In the late 1970’s Charge-Coupled Detectors (CCDs) began
to be used in astronomy, taking over from photographic
plates and image tubes. By the 1990’s, all major research
telescopes in the world were using nitrogen-cooled CCDs.
How a CCD Works

Like a “bucket brigade,”

a CCD collects light like
rain then passes it along
each row where is gets
measured, then along
the columns. But CCDs
actually turn incoming
light into electrons and
store electrical charge
in “wells” that are read
out in two dimensions
and then converted into
a digital signal.
 CCDs Large and Small

2 million pixels 3 billion pixels

Research-grade CCDs have more pixels than digital cameras

and are operated at liquid nitrogen temperatures. They’re
virtually perfect, with (1) almost no blemishes, (2) nearly
100% quantum efficiency, (3) large dynamic range, and (4)
a few electrons read noise.
The camera on the LSST will enable “celestial cinematography,” taking
an image of the entire northern sky every three days to Hubble depth.
 The Ubiquitous CCD

In 1969, Willard Boyle and George

Smith were facing the closure of
their Bell Labs operation, so they
came up with the idea in one hour.

Now, there are 200m

digital cameras and
500m cellphones with
CCDs sold every year.
 CCD Data Issues
Experiments &
Instruments

Other Archives facts questions

Literature

Simulations
facts
? answers

A Big Data Problem

• Data ingest (1 GB per second) • Query and Visualization tools
• Managing a petabyte • Support and Training
• Common data schemas
• Real-Time Performance
• How to organize it?
– Execute queries in a minute
• How to mine/explore it?
– Batch query scheduling
• How to coexist with others
Space Astronomy
 Space Astronomy
• Highly successful NASA “Great Observatories” and planetary
probes have revolutionized our view of the universe, although
they cost 10-20x more than same size telescope on the ground.

Note: This timeline from

6 years ago shows some
missions that are slipping
at a rate of ~1 year/year!
The Moon would be a great spot for an observatory (but at
what price?) Hubble has cost about $8 billion, and counting.
 The Electromagnetic Spectrum

NASA Great Observatories

NASA’s flagships are the

“Great Observatories,”
which are all currently in
operation, though Spitzer
is in “warm mode” after
exhausting its helium. All
of them can make images
and do spectroscopy, and
are used to study planets,
stars and galaxies. They’re
all $1 billion plus missions
Gamma X-Ray Optical IR
 The Electromagnetic Spectrum

NASA Great Observatories WMAP

Special purpose
missions such as
WMAP cost less
(about $300m),
which is 5 to 6x
less than a Great
Observatory and
can also answer
major scientific
questions.

Gamma X-Ray Optical IR Microwaves

 The Electromagnetic Spectrum and Beyond

NASA Great Observatories WMAP LISA

Gamma X-Ray Optical IR Microwaves Gravity Waves

 Across the EM Spectrum

far-IR mid-IR near-IR opt UV far-UV X-ray gamma

JWST FUSE INTEGRAL

Spitzer

Planck Hubble GALEX

Swift

Herschel
Chandra and XMM

SIM,
SOFIA TPF?
 Galileo Updated

The International Year of Astronomy saw

the launch of the “Galileoscope,” a version
of his best instrument made with modern
materials. Only $25, including the tripod!
 History of Optical Telescopes

1010
Photographic & electronic detection
Sensitivity

Electronic
Improvement Telescopes alone
108
over the Eye

Photography

Hubble Space Telescope

106

104

Mount Palomar 200”

Mount Wilson 100”
Herschell’s 48”
Short’s 21.5”

On the Earth:
102
Slow f ratios

Rosse’s 72”

Soviet 6-m
13 of 8 meters
eyepiece
Huygens
Galileo

or over since
the mid 90s
1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

Year of Observation
Hubble Space Telescope
 HST Overview
"The Hubble Space Telescope is the most
productive telescope since Galileo's"
- Robert Kirshner, President of the
American Astronomical Society
• An orbiting telescope that collects light
from celestial objects at visible, UV, and
near-infrared wavelengths
• Launched 24 April, 1990, aboard the
Space Shuttle Discovery
• Dimensions: Cylindrical 24,500 lb
(11,110-kg), 43 ft long (13.1 m ) and 14.1
ft (4.3m) wide
• Orbital period: 96 minutes
• Primarily powered by the sunlight
collected by its two solar arrays
• The telescope’s primary mirror is 2.4 m
(8 ft) in diameter
• Was created by NASA with substantial
and continuing participation by ESA
• Operated by the Space Telescope Science
Institute (STSI) in Baltimore
• Named for Edwin Powell Hubble
 “Top 10 excuses for the HST”

Guy at Sears told us it would work.

Some kid on Earth is playing

with the garage door opener.

Whatchamacallit is jammed against the

doohickey that looks like a cowboy hat.

See if you can think straight after

12 straight days of drinking Tang.

Bum with squeegee smeared lens

at traffic light.
 “Top 10 excuses for the HST”
Blueprints drawn up by that
“Hey Vern” guy.

Those darn raccoons.

Should not have used GE parts.

Ran out of quarters.

Race of super-evolved galactic

beings is screwing with us.
 COSTAR

• Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR).

• Designed to correct spherical aberration due to mis-calibration
of primary mirror before launch.
• Added as part of another instrument and inserted into the light
path of all instruments during the 1st Shuttle servicing mission.
Grunsfeld from orbit
 Top 10: Science Impact
• Creation of galaxies (HDF, UDF)
Dark energy
• Acceleration of the universe: SN Ia First stars
• Distance scale of the universe: H0
• Giant black holes in galaxies
• Emission lines in active galaxies
• Intergalactic medium (QAL)
• Interstellar medium chemistry
• Gamma Ray Burst sources
• Protoplanetary disks
• Extrasolar planets
Eg
Young planetary
systems
Aurorae on Jupiter

Mplanet
 Astronomical Telescope: Astronomical Price Tag
• Original budget: $475 million
• OTA: $69.4 million
• Actual cost: In 1986, when it
was first assembled for launch,
it cost $1.6 billion, and had
several technical problems.
Four years of tinkering and
improvements later, it finally
launched – at $2.2 billion (not
counting $0.5 billion launch!)
• Percentage overrun: 460%
• Mirror had spherical aberration
– only seeing ~20% of the light.
• SM-1: repaired faulty optics,
next 4 rejuvenated the facility.
• Price, after 21 years: $6 billion.
Hubble Images
 Making Color Images

The final color image on the left is the result of extensive processing.
There are four individual images (the top right quadrant at a higher
resolution) and separate images taken through different color filters.
Each color filter has two equal exposures taken (left and right); the
streaks are cosmic ray hits in the CCD silicon. They arrive randomly
and can be removed very efficiently by combining the two images.
The left image is the result of cosmic ray filtering. An even better
result (right) comes from using images in the four different filters.
Next geometric distortions in the camera are mapped and removed
(left), and the seams between the different images are eradicated.
 Blue is assigned to the oxygen filter image, green to the hydrogen
filter image, and red to the sulfur filter image. They are combined.

Courtesy: Jeff Hester (ASU)

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Big Glass
JWST
6.5m
 GCT
10.4m
GMT 21.5m
TMT 30m
30m Plus Adaptive Optics
OWL 100m
Invisible Waves
Arecibo 300m
Square Kilometer Array
The Square Kilometer Array is being built by 18 countries. It will
have 8000 antennas spread over 3000 kilometers, with a central
filled region, and sensitivity 100 x any existing radio telescope
 The Cool Universe
For thermal wavelengths, space is the ideal environment. It’s
almost as good at high altitudes in a plane. The Stratospheric
Observatory for Infrared Astronomy saw first “heat” in 2010.

SOFIA is a 747-SP with

a 2.5m telescope, and
it replaces the 1m KAO
 X-ray telescope: “grazing incidence” optics

Due to shallow angle of collecting the radiation, X-ray telescopes

need more mirror area and are more complex/expensive to build.
Beyond Vision
Ways of Seeing the Universe
The Universe as a Telescope
Gravity Waves
In General Relativity, any time a mass distribution changes
it creates ripples in space-time that propagate in 3D at the
speed of light. The blue lines connect red markers of space
LIGO Livingston Observatory
LIGO Hanford Observatory
 LIGO Layout

Power-recycled, cavity-enhanced Arm Cavities:

Michelson Interferometer • Livingston: 4km long
• Hanford: 4km and 2km long
TITM = 2.7%, Finesse ~ 115

15kW Power Recycling mirror:

TPR = 2.7%, Gain ~ 50

225W
Mirrors:
• Material: Fused Silica
• 25 cm diameter
5W • 10 cm thick
• Wedged (~2deg)
Beam Pipe and Enclosure

• Minimal Enclosure (no services)

• Beam Pipe
– 1.2m diam; 3 mm stainless
– 65 ft spiral weld sections
– 50 km of weld (NO LEAKS!)
 Suspension and Optics

Fused Silica
Single suspension 0.31mm music wire

Surface figure = /6000

• surface uniformity < 1nm rms

• scatter < 50 ppm
• absorption < 2 ppm
• internal Q’s > 2 x 106
 Signal Sources
 Binary systems
» Neutron star – Neutron star
» Black hole – Neutron star
» Black hole – Black hole

 Periodic Sources
» Rotating pulsars

 “Burst” Sources
» Supernovae
» Gamma ray bursters
» ?????
BANG!
 Stochastic
» Big Bang Background
» Cosmic Strings
LIGO is a laser
interferometer
that can detect
motions below
the size of one
proton over a
span of 5km;
it’s by far the
most accurate
experiment in
physics ever, a
precision of:

10-22
LIGO and LISA
Frontiers
Big Bang + 700,000,000 years
First Light and Beyond

Big Bang + 100,000,000 years

First Light and Beyond

Big Bang + 300,000 years

First Light and Beyond

Big Bang + 10-35 seconds

 Beyond Einstein

• New probes of the inflationary epoch

• The possibility of hidden dimensions
• Observational tests of the multiverse