Why are most of the comments about things that she already brought up in the video? It's like you just saw the video title and commented without watching.
Welcome to UA-cam and the internet, where people read titles, misunderstand them, and then comment on the video they didn't watch with information they gleaned from some other source that would make 'reputable' sound like a dirty word.
@@kingsalami80 If you think it's obvious then it seems you missed the point of the video. The video clearly wasn't made just to answer a simple question, but to highlight the problems inherent in different approaches to making astronomical observations.
I feel like a lunar telescope would be more useful in the immediate future. Considering the lack of atmosphere and being much easier to get to, the moon seems to be a better choice.
Putting one on the bottom of one of those polar craters that sees no sun would be amazing too, that’s probably some of the clearest skies in the whole solar system bar deep space itself.
@@GustavoGplay It didn't seem to pose much risk to the lunar missions. And there is no atmosphere to blow the dust around. It would need to be disturbed physically by people or impacts. The moon does have gravity, so it would settle after a bit.
@@Futt.Buckerson the channel Real Engineering has a very interesting video on the Lunar dust issue and the challenges the Artemis missions will face. Maybe it can be circumvented, idk. Still think a super moon wide telescope is a great idea
Thanks for another fascinating video. I love the format: your facial expressions reinforce the enthusiasm in your voice - so much better than a voice-over. Content is always informative, and I always learn something new. And I stick around for the out-takes! Great combination, Becky - keep them coming! :)
Only a physicist can take a simple no and turn it into 18 minute discussion. I loved it. I got to show off a rudimentary version of the double slit experiment at work and we make brake lines. I had to demonstrate teaching someone to do the experiment using important steps, key points, and reasons for key points for a 10 hour bto class on training employees that work had me take. I love when I get chances to talk about physics.
I am constantly entranced by your videos - so informative and yet intelligible to someone who doesn't have a PhD in Astronomy. You have a very rare and wonderful talent Dr. Becky Thank you
I'd say, forgo with setting up an entire manufacturing plant on a different celestial body, and all the difficulties with mars re-entry, and set up telescopes on Lagrange points L3, L4 and L5, and combine them in an array. 2AU telescope!! :-D
To me this makes the most sense since arrays need to know where the other parts often array are to the precision of a wavelength, and at some point we will have a precedent for doing something similar with Lagrange points with the LISA gravitational wave observatory. You can't use that method on Mars-Earth because the orbits are different.
Great analysis Becky, thanks for doing this. I'm assuming the risk of being hit by a meteorite on the moon would be similar to L2 etc so an observatory on the Moon's risk would be higher than James Web by its physical size. BTW great point about the ability to combine observations between Earth and Mars to make an effective bigger observation
Great detailed answer to, what at the surface, is a simple question. Also, nice shirt. I have a patch that's the same logo. Loved walking into the little public area in Keck and showing the superstructure of the one telescope to my son. Good times.
Placing space telescopes on planets and moons with low atmosphere blockage, for clear view is brilliant! I've, also many times thread that idea to those Mars rover topic channels, imagine a protective dome body frame, for a Space Telescopes Station, having mirrors & camera features like JWST.
About that "destroying your telescope" thing when you put one on the Moon: What about making the mirror of the telescope (the largest, and most damage sensitive part) out of a liquid metal instead of a solid? And then to get the proper curve to the mirror's surface, you would spin the entire mirror to cause the liquid in the center to be flung outwards by centrifugal/centripetal forces. With the right metal chosen for the task (sodium-potassium eutectic alloy seems promising because of low melting point and low vapor pressure), any lunar regolith debris or meteorites that might otherwise land on the mirror's surface would simply sink to the bottom of the wide, shallow container of liquid metal, in which case they could be later scooped out with what could best be described as metallic versions of the mesh nets used to clean debris out of pools, and with a suitable design those could even be automated to run when the telescope is not observing anything. Radio telescopes on the other hand would be much easier to place on the Moon, as it shouldn't be too hard to have a robotic rover lay out a truly gigantic array of simple dipole antennas (and I think I saw a paper about that at one point, but where exactly escapes me at the moment). But the idea I had for optical telescopes is still a very good one I think, It's an adaptation of the old "mercury mirror" telescope idea that has been used a few times on small-scale telescopes in the past but is frowned upon today due to the large amounts of mercury needed. Obviously on the moon, no such environmental concerns are applicable, there is no biosphere to protect from harm, and the people that might service such a telescope would only need special space suits designed to withstand the moderately elevated temperatures of being immersed in liquid sodium-potassium alloy. One challenge is how to avoid using an ice sublimation cooler for the ECLSS of the space suit, as that's what's currently used on US space suits, but it would not be suitable for this telescope servicing suit because of the energetic reaction of water with both sodium and potassium, however it became apparent to me that on the Moon that would only result in the generation of metallic hydroixdes and hydrogen gas, but the reaction itself is still highly exothermic and would still contaminate the mirror's surface, so sources of such contamination are to be eliminated.
I pondered something like this question for a session of the role playing game "Space: 1889". One benefit to a telescope on Mars is you get a heck of a lot bigger baseline for stellar parallax measurements. And when they're at Opposition, you should easily be able to see the larger/brighter asteroids and Jupiter's Galilean Satellites with the naked eye. And don't forget that you could see the Moon going around the Earth.
VLBI between earth and mars at opposition would give pretty impressive resolution, especially at the shorter radio wavelengths! Assuming it was feasible to do. Would it be possible to do visible wavelength VLBI at those distances? now that would be something
What really gets me about the Opportunity rover is that it was designed to last for three months, and instead lasted about fifteen _years_ ... but finally died because nobody thought to put a windshield wiper on the solar panels.
Remember every gram you lift costs in fuel. That mass can be better spent on science instruments or on the rover itself. Especially if you do not think the rover will last long enough to see a dust storm. That is assuming a wiper would last as long as Oppy in the first place (Extra mass, extra complexity, how do you deal with the wiper wearing down or snagging on a part of the rover?)
@@ptonpc I know about all those things, my point was just that with all this hindsight it seems that a dust clearing mechanism may actually have been worth it. Not that anybody could have known that at the time, of course.
@@patrikhjorth3291 Agreed, hindsight is wonderful. Thinking back to the last photos, I don't think any way of cleaning the panels would have worked. The sun itself was not visible. The storm lasted so long Oppy's batteries ran down and the electronics most likely froze.
@@patrikhjorth3291 Actually the engineers were surprised the MERs lasted so long precisely because they expected dust deposition to reduce their available power not that long after the original 90 day lifetime. What they hadn't accounted for was that the same winds that deposited the dust would also sometimes clean it off. As for why no cleaning mechanism ? As others have said, extra mass, complexity and failure points. But also I'd wonder how safely a rotating brush or similar could clear it off without damaging the panels (given how sharp the dust particles can be).
I suppose I should explain that I'm not complaining or criticising the people who built the rover, though I guess it may come off that way. They did after all build a rover that lasted that much longer than expected. I just think it's a bit... ironic, I guess, how things turned out.
I agree with your assessment. While this is a question worth posing, it is an easy, resounding "no", unless we have a civilization on Mars. If you're going to go all the way to Mars to get to a thinner atmosphere, you might as well just leave it in space where there is no (or negligible) atmosphere, rather than risking a crash on a place with tons that can still distort images.
I really love the way she explains things like this! If anyone still watching can answer this question for me, I would super appreciate it: is the reason WHY an atmosphere would even have carbon monoxide/dioxide in the first place be because of carbon's quadruple bonding sites, so that all available carbon would need to be completely 'filled' with oxygen before the leftover would be free to just remain O2? I just would like to know if I'm understanding this correctly, and if not, how it actually works. Thanks in advance!
You are very human (love those bloopers at the end), and more kids need to watch stuff like this to think about how they, despite whatever faults they think they have, can and should be looking to do this in their future also.
Just referred here by your newest video... after all the time it took to get to discussing interferometry and the VLBA, we SHOULD be looking at including a Hubble-style telescope integrated into the next orbiting Mars observatories that will probably also act as radio relay stations for whatever else gets sent that away. What about repurposing the instruments in the current Mars orbiters that have been doing global mapping for a long time? Now I'll have to check out what is currently operational around Mars and what instruments are operational? What about Juno?
Another problem with building an Event Horizon telescope on Mars would be the many Terabytes of data you would need to send back to Earth. Curiosity can send ~20 GB/day to Earth, so sending 1 TB would take 50 days.
I put on my pro arguments before I watch the video and see what Becky thinks. - Close enough to the sun to harvest sun radiation as energy source. - Atmosphere is hardly present, so that does not impair the observation. Maybe landing the thing would be rough. And maybe the type of radiation you gather is also important. I am really looking forward on the James Webb telescope going operational. Maybe the first POP3 stars will be detected by some direct image from the past.
Doctor-- I appreciate your explanation on why Mars would be less than ideal for peering into the heavens. But I have two questions: 1. How is it that asteroids striking the Moon would be a problem? Engineers can create hardened sites (A.K.A. bunkers) for the telescopes. Sure, a really big hit could destroy very expensive equipment, but same on Earth or Mars. 2. You explained that the Solar Wind stripped away most of Mars' atmosphere, which I had already learned of. Earth is immune to most effects (excepting aurorae and power outages), but we all know that artificial satellites can be killed by the radiation. How much of a problem is interference from the solar wind for space telescopes on a daily basis, i.e., for Hubble and Chandra?
research indicates termites/cockroaches are responsible for more methane emissions,Stephen Zwick, studied at Cornell University states Cockroaches, termites, centipedes and various arthropods all produce methane as noted in this study from 1994 “Methane production in terrestrial arthropods.” Roughly 200 to 300 hundred cockroaches emit as much methane as a head of cattle.
Cool outtakes at the end 🙂 And good info around the proposition. Personally I'm a little disheartened, I feel we need real breakthroughs in propulsion systems, I think we need to fund this area the most. It's great that we can, or will be able to see planets millions (or billions,) of light years away and know their compositions, but we can't travel to them in less than millions or billions of light years and that's if we could travel at the speed of light, and we are nowhere near that. Propulsion systems ppl, way out there thinking, that's what I think we need (to do.)
If you build the telescope from local materials then sure! But if you are sending it from Earth then just leave it in orbit around Mars or put it on Phobos. Or maybe on top of Olympus Mons :-)
Olympus Mons isn't really that high on planetary scales. Phobos might be better than even the moon because the gravity there is tiny so they don't need to be very strong.
By the time we get to the point where we could build a telescope of the kind that would be of benefit to science, from 'local materials', surely we would be a point where launch costs are so trivial that its given as much consideration as getting a car delivered from the factory to the showroom?
@NotPoodle I don't think so. Launching from Earth will likely always require a lot of energy: to get out of a strong gravity well, you need rockets with high reaction mass, but those have relatively low specific impulse, and thus the Rocket Equation requires that you spend much more of mass in fuel than payload that you actually get to send to space. A space elevator, or some kind of clever momentum exchange tether would change that. But I would be surprised if we had one of those before a permanent colony on Mars.
Really what we need is a manned orbital observatory, or rather, a station floating beside an observatory (no reason to let vibration cross). Instead of sending up a new reflector with every instrument, we send up a single reflector and let a man with a spanner replace the instruments as required. No need for billions spent on perfect robotics if you are going to have a person there anyway, and regular launches to bring spare parts. Orbital assembly alone cuts the weight down to a fraction due to not having to have a telescope that is strong enough to survive 3+G and extreme vibration. When you get it to orbit, and realise it doesn't work, you fix it till it does, rather than the current 'might not work', fix it, still might not work, fix it, till you have spent 10x the budget, launch the thing, and you have to repair it anyway.
I always thought this would be one of the first tasks for the ISS. One F9 launch would put a huge segmented mirror up to the ISS and unlike JST it doesn't need a fancy unfolding mechanism. Just bolt it together like meccano. An F9 launch probably wouldn't cost any more than ground based site preparation (roads on tall volcanoes aren't cheap) and a dome (construction on top of tall volcanoes isn't cheap). The mirror can be cheaper than ground based one because it doesn't need to resist flexing in gravity and doesn't need to be actively distorted to counter atmospheric distortion.
Mars is a fascinating subject. Thank you for putting this one to bed. Perhaps you have already addressed - you said here "more telescopes in space, closer to home" - If looking at the proponents of Giant Magellen and the European ELT and so on, they go to great pains to taut their respective abilities to actively compensate for atmospheric distortion, and suggest, without saying so, "Who needs space ?" Of course, you indirectly addressed that here when talking about where in the spectrum our atmosphere is opaque and nearly so -- so why do we build the space telescopes we do (JWST emphasizes the IR) and are we building the right ones, and what next should be on the list ?
The main problem with building things on Mars (or the Moon) is the fantastic cost of getting stuff to the surface. It's better to stop half-way, so to speak, and build in space. Also, with zero gravity, there's no physical limit to how big you can make your mirror. The Webb telescope is limited by the fact that it had to be squeezed onto the top of a single rocket, but you could send a huge mirror up in segments. Manned missions would probably be needed to assemble the thing, but we already know how to do that.
We have quite an interesting experiment in the undergrad labs using IR spectroscopy to characterise certain metal complexes. Throughout the day, in the reruns of the background you can see the increase in the CO2 and H2O as people....well do people things. its a great way of showing the undergrads how IR can be used in atmospheric analysis as well as chemical characterisation.
Becky! Olympus Mons! 25km high puts it "out of the atmosphere" (in practice, I think around 72 pascals, 8% of the pressure at Mars sea lev... at Mars reference) - about 0.05% of earth's atmosphere. That's gotta help, surely!
Dr. Becky, if the universe is expanding, what force drove them to expand? if we consider dark energy, then the analogy fitting would be like an elastic sheet and on it are galaxies. Stretch the sheet by holding each end and you will notice that both ends of the sheet stretch longer than the inner part thus galaxies that are very far from the inner sheet, travels faster?
Love your channel. I have a question about Mars. Is it older than earth? Not sure if the answer is possible. The reason I ask, is it possible that the earth will render to the same demise as mars? Lifeless and inhabitable. I understand the geological time frame for this to occur. I was curious whether we can date the age of planets other than our own.
Cool video, and good job! You're getting much better at audio! Next, I think, is working on the camera's settings. The brightness was fluttering up and down a lot. ;)
We always tend to think of the cost of putting up a new instrument. I'd like to see repurposing of existing space assets. All that stuff floating around collected and remade by a space recycling and manufacturing center could, possibly, send thousands of instruments around the solar system. Of course we'd have to figure in meteor strikes and the failures, but if your churning out thousands of units the shear numbers could mean a guaranteed base to rely on. Yes, I know... pie in the sky, but hey! We all dream!
Mars has another advantage; parallax. We can message the distance to objects directly by taking a photo of it and six months later, when the Earth is on the other side of the Sun, we take another and compare the difference in its angle. But lots of things are so far away that even this doesn't work. With Mars the half year (23 months) change of position is even greater meaning we could directly message things that are further away.
Hello, Dr. Becky! I'm a bit late but I do have a question: if the Earth's atmosphere were to disappear, and considering that we wouldn't die and stuff, would we be able to see more stars and planets from earth by the naked eye? Or would it still require especial leanses and telescopes? And what do you think about technology to change a planet's atmosphere, is there or could exist such thing? For instance, trying to convert the carbon dioxide on Mars to oxygen, and maybe start playing with it to make it liveable? Thanks a bunch!
Dr. Becky... I love your videos. But was it really necessary to put Blinded by the light into my brain... It always refuses to leave in a timely manner ;)
I'm only going to address the Radio Astronomy part of the vid. First problem is who would set the "Table of Frequency Allocations ( Table 5 in ITU Handbook?) for Mars? Second, you don't have to have a solid reflector on the radio astronomy "dish" a piece of fine mesh would do. Third, it doesn't have to be a dish - I think there's a very low frequency transit array in the Netherlands. For the Moon, the second and third solutions would work too but the first problem doesn't exist - the frequencies are already allocated.
Dust? There's a hint at a partial solution on your shirt. Olympus Mons's status as the largest volcano in the solar system became apparent when it was the only surface feature not covered by the global dust storm that raged when Mariner 9 arrived. Also, the pressure is like 70 pascals there, about 1/8th the mean surface pressure.
@@eds1942 Maps of the large martian volcanoes all show calderas with convenient flat areas. These are above the majority of the martian atmosphere. The true summit could be flattened with excavation equipment for large optical telescopes. Olympus Mons is higher above mean martian surface than Mt. Everest and is 72 kilometers wide at the summit. Another interesting candidate would be asteroids with highly elliptical orbits that would carry observatories beyond the inner solar system. Arrays of these wold provide a wider baseline at aphelion and would be accessible during perihelion. For example, the orbit of Halley's Comet has an eccentricity of 0.9671, so that while its perihelion brings it well within Earth's orbit, the outer leg of the comet's path takes it to a distance of some 35 AU from the Sun, far beyond the orbit of Neptune. volcano.oregonstate.edu/oldroot/volcanoes/planet_volcano/mars/Shields/Overview.html
@@jamesdriscoll9405 That's a usage of the word 'accessible' that I wasn't previously aware of. PS: 70 km/s relative to Earth and only turns up for service/instrument swap, every 75ish years. I struggle to think of anywhere less accessible.
Why not use Olympus Mons? Should be above most dust and atmosphere. A couple of sheets of plastic should protect the disk from dust and small meteorites. (Two sheets because you will be replacing them relatively often. Might as well not leave the mirror uncovered. Choosing the right plastic you might be able to hold the piece vertically, and heat up an area to repair it. For larger holes it might be possible to squeeze a dab on the spot and use two warm flat irons to complete a repair.)
Is there a largest practical space-based radio telescope diameter (combining signals from different telescopes launched in opposite directions), and what is it, and what resolutions might be achieved (what types of things/features might we hope to see, e.g. large boulders on exoplanets?).
Other than more accurate parallax measurements is there any reason to build on Mars rather than the moon? In orbit of Mars would give that same benefit without the atmospheric issues. Building and maintaining it on the ground with locally sourced materials is the only real benefit yes?
X-rays would also be scattered from Rayleigh scattering. View of x-rays bouncing off the surface is different than being on the surface looking up. It’s called the shower curtain effect. The source of scatter is closer to you when you’re on the surface.
*Question* Is it possible to use a wormhole for travel? Cause wormhole to me means "fancy black hole" and not even light can escape a black hole. So shouldnt worm hole travel be impossible? Sure you connect two areas of space but whats the point? Thanks :)
At one point you say that water vapor can distort the image and gave the example of a mirage. A mirage is not water vapor but different temperature air layers. My understanding is that water vapor itself it optically transparent but when it condenses into clouds it can scanter light - but not produce distortions. The distortions are from temperature differences.
You're not wrong, but the analogy might be trying to get to space by building a bigger skyscraper. It helps but is more expensive the farther you go to the point where the cost of less viewing hours is far outweighed by the cost of getting there.
I'm sure it could be useful, but I think it's better to put a very large telescope in space instead. A telescope in space can be moved to view anything, and it can collect light for more than a few hours since there are no horizon issues that you would have on a planet.
Isn't Olympus Mons' peak basically above Martian atmosphere? Wouldn't that mean that observatories located there wouldn't have to worry about radiation windows, Raleigh scattering, or dust storms? Or at least a lot less?
Indeed, and it's not like Mount Everest like peak either, but there are wide flat areas to build on. However, it's almost impossible to land a probe there with current technology (no aerobraking), but potentially, an interesting location even if the far side of the Moon is so much more suitable.
Okay, so the moon doesn't have an atmosphere to shield your telescope from incoming space rocks. How is that any different from being in orbit? Has the Hubble taken a lot of damage from meteorites and such? At least having a telescope ground-based on the moon would make any service or repair easier, since an astronaut would have something to stand on while he/she worked, and wouldn't have to worry about things floating away if they were dropped. Am I just missing something here?
Isn't the speed that Mars (or the Moon) move with also important when considering building telescopes on a planet? I'm an amateur photographer and to the quality of my pictures, it's important that my camera doesnt move as I take the picture. Doesn't telescopes have verry long shutter times?
Seeing today’s Percy photos from Mars of own galaxy convinces me a telescope would be awesome for more parallax measurements. Now to figure out how to deal with dust storms!
The Earth's orbit around the Sun is enough to get parallax measurements on the billion closest stars. Look up the Gaia mission. Putting Gaia around Mars would help a little, but not much.
It genuinely took me a moment when looking at the 3/2/19 date stamp on your Twitter feed to remember that you are not in a fact a time traveler, but from the UK where the dates are written reversed from what I'm accustomed to.
We should put a radio telescope in orbit around Mars, so we'd get the distance benefit without the atmosphere getting in the way... And if Mars is colonized by that point, as was hypothesized at the beginning of the video, then there'd be people to monitor the telescope locally, so you wouldn't have the communication problem
A radio relay system would be needed. Since Mars rotates on an axis, the telescope would face away from Earth at certain times. Don't forget that radio transmissions travel at the speed of light, thus, it takes 21 minutes for a message to reach Mars from Earth and Vice versa.
Dr. Becky, are you saying, at about the 5min mark that IF, if there were a pulsar close enough to earth to be visible that we would not have been able to see it until Yuri Gagarin went up?!?!
@Dr. Becky Just a little correction. You said that the higher the wavelength, the higher the resolution, when I'm pretty sure you meant to say the lower the wavelength the higher the resolution. Theta is the inverse of the resolution rather than proportional to the resolution. Also, wouldn't a telescope on Mars give a more accurate measurement of parallax, since the orbital diameter is larger? That would be useful
If you put the telescope on the top of Olympus Mons, you would be above 99% of the Martian atmosphere. Another advantage of telescopes on Mars is Parallax. If we want to see how far (nearby) stars are from us, we can look at the change of angle compared to distant stars 6 months apart (when Earth is at opposite sides of its orbit). Doing that on Mars will be more accurate because Mars' orbit is significantly larger than Earth's. Warm regards, Rick.
sing it!!! :) loved the video. so i have a question. IF 2 neutron stars were to collide from being flung off from, lets say a bianary system, could there be a potential of them fracturing and the pieces flying off into space instead of merging with the expected nova? and if the sections were to fly apart how would you calculate the gravitational mass after it was severed from the parent star?
Olympus Mons! If you want to build a telescope on the surface of Mars then you would do the same thing as here on earth for the same reasons and go to Olympus Mons. It basically sticks out of the Martian atmosphere and so would be almost like building a telescope on the moon. Anyone who has wasted their time thinking about planets instead of doing the studying that they should be doing would know that. Was Nicholas Heavens deliberately trying to look like Jim Carry from his dumb and bumber role? 17:19 props for the Springsteen tune. I wouldn't have thought that someone who has brought up the song that you talked about in one video would know that 1970's gem. Please tell me that you were making fun of Bruce and don't think that those are the real lyrics though. Of course you don't think those are the real lyrics. I dare you to analyze the lyrics of that song and do a video on what he was really talking about through the whole thing.
Hey, Dr_Becky - nice channel! I appreciate getting real info from a real scientist, as opposed to conspiracy channel claptrap. Hence the subscription. I noticed you suggested that putting a scope on the Moon might not be a good idea, given the possibility of getting hit by a meteorite; you showed the fascinating shot of the moon getting struck during the recent lunar eclipse. I've given that one a bit of thought, and I think the chance of having your scope hit by a meteorite on the moon would be a good deal lower than the chance of suffering a hit on the Hubble. My reason for arriving at this conclusion is that the Hubble is also in vacuum, hence unprotected; but it is in a much deeper gravity well, and so should be experiencing a higher micrometeorite count than a similar sized scope on the lunar surface would. In general, a scope on the Moon should not be in any greater danger than a similarly sized scope in orbit around Earth. Actually, when we account for not only the bigger gravity well but also the tens of thousands of objects we've put in orbit around our planet, I think an Earth orbit based telescope would be in even greater danger. I'm told that even a fleck of paint can be dangerous at orbital speeds. But I do worry about the dust on the Moon not being eroded; that is, Lunar dust particles have very sharp edges, and are very abrasive. This can get into mechanical mechanisms and literally grind them to pieces. The Apollo astronauts experienced this on their suits; the rotating cuffs suffered extreme wear. We've all seen the film of the Apollo 17 lunar rover bounding across the surface of the moon, throwing up big fans of lunar dust from the wheels; I suspect that the vehicle would have had a very limited lifespan. It was probably just as well the astronauts left it behind. So I think the Moon would be a great location for an optical scope; but the designers would have to take into account the extremely abrasive characteristics of lunar dust. Oh, and if the Moon is a good location for an optical telescope, then I would think the far side of the Moon would be a spectacular location for a radio telescope; it would have the entire bulk of the Moon acting as a radio wave barrier, blocking out radio waves from Earth with thousands of miles of rock. Thanks for a great channel! Regards, Charlie
what about as an asteroids detection thing? Is their any valuable reason to do so? and what about the space telescope that would sit behind the planets? like the jwst?
Doctor, you're pumping content like crazy. I love it! This was so much fun. :-)
Has anyone else noticed she isn't reading this from a prompter? every bit of this is pouring out as fast as she speaks it, she is brilliant.
Why are most of the comments about things that she already brought up in the video? It's like you just saw the video title and commented without watching.
Welcome to UA-cam and the internet, where people read titles, misunderstand them, and then comment on the video they didn't watch with information they gleaned from some other source that would make 'reputable' sound like a dirty word.
@@Biomirth Good thing I read your comment. no point in duplicates... lol
we did because its obvious
@@kingsalami80 If you think it's obvious then it seems you missed the point of the video. The video clearly wasn't made just to answer a simple question, but to highlight the problems inherent in different approaches to making astronomical observations.
50% of UA-cam comments (and 90% of downvotes) are from people who didn't watch.
Those numbers are certified by my butt, which is where they came from.
An atmosphere expert called "Heavens"? Excellent! :D
Some things are just... perfect.
In the old days, on CompuServe, I met a fellow called Denzel Dyer. His profession: Dye chemist.
I feel like a lunar telescope would be more useful in the immediate future. Considering the lack of atmosphere and being much easier to get to, the moon seems to be a better choice.
Putting one on the bottom of one of those polar craters that sees no sun would be amazing too, that’s probably some of the clearest skies in the whole solar system bar deep space itself.
Moon dust could be a pretty bad issue. But it does sound like a better choice than Mars...
@@GustavoGplay It didn't seem to pose much risk to the lunar missions. And there is no atmosphere to blow the dust around. It would need to be disturbed physically by people or impacts. The moon does have gravity, so it would settle after a bit.
@@Futt.Buckerson the channel Real Engineering has a very interesting video on the Lunar dust issue and the challenges the Artemis missions will face. Maybe it can be circumvented, idk. Still think a super moon wide telescope is a great idea
Robotic lunar rovers to clear the dust from and otherwise maintain the telescope?
Thanks for another fascinating video. I love the format: your facial expressions reinforce the enthusiasm in your voice - so much better than a voice-over. Content is always informative, and I always learn something new. And I stick around for the out-takes! Great combination, Becky - keep them coming! :)
Only a physicist can take a simple no and turn it into 18 minute discussion. I loved it. I got to show off a rudimentary version of the double slit experiment at work and we make brake lines. I had to demonstrate teaching someone to do the experiment using important steps, key points, and reasons for key points for a 10 hour bto class on training employees that work had me take. I love when I get chances to talk about physics.
I am constantly entranced by your videos - so informative and yet intelligible to someone who doesn't have a PhD in Astronomy. You have a very rare and wonderful talent Dr. Becky Thank you
I'd say, forgo with setting up an entire manufacturing plant on a different celestial body, and all the difficulties with mars re-entry, and set up telescopes on Lagrange points L3, L4 and L5, and combine them in an array. 2AU telescope!! :-D
L3 is in cazimi. Are you going to use L4 or L5 to relay data to/from L3? What if a telescope needs to be repaired?
To me this makes the most sense since arrays need to know where the other parts often array are to the precision of a wavelength, and at some point we will have a precedent for doing something similar with Lagrange points with the LISA gravitational wave observatory.
You can't use that method on Mars-Earth because the orbits are different.
Great analysis Becky, thanks for doing this. I'm assuming the risk of being hit by a meteorite on the moon would be similar to L2 etc so an observatory on the Moon's risk would be higher than James Web by its physical size. BTW great point about the ability to combine observations between Earth and Mars to make an effective bigger observation
Great detailed answer to, what at the surface, is a simple question.
Also, nice shirt. I have a patch that's the same logo. Loved walking into the little public area in Keck and showing the superstructure of the one telescope to my son. Good times.
I love how you explain things, I'm really glad I found this channel recently :D
I really appreciate how you referred to Watney in the novel rather than the movie!
Excellent analysis Dr. Becky! Thank you.
once again i'm amazed, you do it right. btw those out takes priceless
Placing space telescopes on planets and moons with low atmosphere blockage, for clear view is brilliant! I've, also many times thread that idea to those Mars rover topic channels, imagine a protective dome body frame, for a Space Telescopes Station, having mirrors & camera features like JWST.
About that "destroying your telescope" thing when you put one on the Moon:
What about making the mirror of the telescope (the largest, and most damage sensitive part) out of a liquid metal instead of a solid?
And then to get the proper curve to the mirror's surface, you would spin the entire mirror to cause the liquid in the center to be flung outwards by centrifugal/centripetal forces.
With the right metal chosen for the task (sodium-potassium eutectic alloy seems promising because of low melting point and low vapor pressure), any lunar regolith debris or meteorites that might otherwise land on the mirror's surface would simply sink to the bottom of the wide, shallow container of liquid metal, in which case they could be later scooped out with what could best be described as metallic versions of the mesh nets used to clean debris out of pools, and with a suitable design those could even be automated to run when the telescope is not observing anything.
Radio telescopes on the other hand would be much easier to place on the Moon, as it shouldn't be too hard to have a robotic rover lay out a truly gigantic array of simple dipole antennas (and I think I saw a paper about that at one point, but where exactly escapes me at the moment).
But the idea I had for optical telescopes is still a very good one I think, It's an adaptation of the old "mercury mirror" telescope idea that has been used a few times on small-scale telescopes in the past but is frowned upon today due to the large amounts of mercury needed.
Obviously on the moon, no such environmental concerns are applicable, there is no biosphere to protect from harm, and the people that might service such a telescope would only need special space suits designed to withstand the moderately elevated temperatures of being immersed in liquid sodium-potassium alloy. One challenge is how to avoid using an ice sublimation cooler for the ECLSS of the space suit, as that's what's currently used on US space suits, but it would not be suitable for this telescope servicing suit because of the energetic reaction of water with both sodium and potassium, however it became apparent to me that on the Moon that would only result in the generation of metallic hydroixdes and hydrogen gas, but the reaction itself is still highly exothermic and would still contaminate the mirror's surface, so sources of such contamination are to be eliminated.
I pondered something like this question for a session of the role playing game "Space: 1889". One benefit to a telescope on Mars is you get a heck of a lot bigger baseline for stellar parallax measurements. And when they're at Opposition, you should easily be able to see the larger/brighter asteroids and Jupiter's Galilean Satellites with the naked eye. And don't forget that you could see the Moon going around the Earth.
Hello Dr.Becky, I loved the Pierce Brown novels as well. Red Rising is a great novel series.
love how far your production has come on these video's! Thank you dr. becky!
VLBI between earth and mars at opposition would give pretty impressive resolution, especially at the shorter radio wavelengths! Assuming it was feasible to do. Would it be possible to do visible wavelength VLBI at those distances? now that would be something
I'm particularly interested in this solar system sized radio telescope you speak of!
Seems like the biggest point in favor of Martian telescopes.
What really gets me about the Opportunity rover is that it was designed to last for three months, and instead lasted about fifteen _years_ ... but finally died because nobody thought to put a windshield wiper on the solar panels.
Remember every gram you lift costs in fuel. That mass can be better spent on science instruments or on the rover itself. Especially if you do not think the rover will last long enough to see a dust storm. That is assuming a wiper would last as long as Oppy in the first place (Extra mass, extra complexity, how do you deal with the wiper wearing down or snagging on a part of the rover?)
@@ptonpc I know about all those things, my point was just that with all this hindsight it seems that a dust clearing mechanism may actually have been worth it. Not that anybody could have known that at the time, of course.
@@patrikhjorth3291 Agreed, hindsight is wonderful. Thinking back to the last photos, I don't think any way of cleaning the panels would have worked. The sun itself was not visible. The storm lasted so long Oppy's batteries ran down and the electronics most likely froze.
@@patrikhjorth3291 Actually the engineers were surprised the MERs lasted so long precisely because they expected dust deposition to reduce their available power not that long after the original 90 day lifetime. What they hadn't accounted for was that the same winds that deposited the dust would also sometimes clean it off.
As for why no cleaning mechanism ? As others have said, extra mass, complexity and failure points. But also I'd wonder how safely a rotating brush or similar could clear it off without damaging the panels (given how sharp the dust particles can be).
I suppose I should explain that I'm not complaining or criticising the people who built the rover, though I guess it may come off that way. They did after all build a rover that lasted that much longer than expected.
I just think it's a bit... ironic, I guess, how things turned out.
I agree with your assessment. While this is a question worth posing, it is an easy, resounding "no", unless we have a civilization on Mars. If you're going to go all the way to Mars to get to a thinner atmosphere, you might as well just leave it in space where there is no (or negligible) atmosphere, rather than risking a crash on a place with tons that can still distort images.
I really love the way she explains things like this! If anyone still watching can answer this question for me, I would super appreciate it: is the reason WHY an atmosphere would even have carbon monoxide/dioxide in the first place be because of carbon's quadruple bonding sites, so that all available carbon would need to be completely 'filled' with oxygen before the leftover would be free to just remain O2? I just would like to know if I'm understanding this correctly, and if not, how it actually works. Thanks in advance!
Best astronomy channel on the tubes
Increasable answer to what I initially thought was a mundane question. I was not expecting that! And the bonus info 16:51 was the best.
Thanks Dr Becky. Loving your vids.
You are very human (love those bloopers at the end), and more kids need to watch stuff like this to think about how they, despite whatever faults they think they have, can and should be looking to do this in their future also.
Just referred here by your newest video... after all the time it took to get to discussing interferometry and the VLBA, we SHOULD be looking at including a Hubble-style telescope integrated into the next orbiting Mars observatories that will probably also act as radio relay stations for whatever else gets sent that away. What about repurposing the instruments in the current Mars orbiters that have been doing global mapping for a long time? Now I'll have to check out what is currently operational around Mars and what instruments are operational? What about Juno?
Another problem with building an Event Horizon telescope on Mars would be the many Terabytes of data you would need to send back to Earth. Curiosity can send ~20 GB/day to Earth, so sending 1 TB would take 50 days.
A bigger problem would be getting the distance between the telescopes accurate to within a wavelength or so.
Thank you very much for all these details, it is very interesting to learn something new from you!
I put on my pro arguments before I watch the video and see what Becky thinks.
- Close enough to the sun to harvest sun radiation as energy source.
- Atmosphere is hardly present, so that does not impair the observation.
Maybe landing the thing would be rough.
And maybe the type of radiation you gather is also important.
I am really looking forward on the James Webb telescope going operational. Maybe the first POP3 stars will be detected by some direct image from the past.
Doctor-- I appreciate your explanation on why Mars would be less than ideal for peering into the heavens. But I have two questions: 1. How is it that asteroids striking the Moon would be a problem? Engineers can create hardened sites (A.K.A. bunkers) for the telescopes. Sure, a really big hit could destroy very expensive equipment, but same on Earth or Mars. 2. You explained that the Solar Wind stripped away most of Mars' atmosphere, which I had already learned of. Earth is immune to most effects (excepting aurorae and power outages), but we all know that artificial satellites can be killed by the radiation. How much of a problem is interference from the solar wind for space telescopes on a daily basis, i.e., for Hubble and Chandra?
Actually, most of the methane comes from cow _burps,_ not cow farts.
research indicates termites/cockroaches are responsible for more methane emissions,Stephen Zwick, studied at Cornell University states Cockroaches, termites, centipedes and various arthropods all produce methane as noted in this study from 1994 “Methane production in terrestrial arthropods.” Roughly 200 to 300 hundred cockroaches emit as much methane as a head of cattle.
Cow farts sounds far more comedy than cow burps though 👍🐮💩
A burb is just a fart with a smile (-:
And a significant fraction comes from decay of any organic material - of which there is an enormous amount covering much of the surface of this globe.
bull shit
Cool outtakes at the end 🙂 And good info around the proposition. Personally I'm a little disheartened, I feel we need real breakthroughs in propulsion systems, I think we need to fund this area the most. It's great that we can, or will be able to see planets millions (or billions,) of light years away and know their compositions, but we can't travel to them in less than millions or billions of light years and that's if we could travel at the speed of light, and we are nowhere near that. Propulsion systems ppl, way out there thinking, that's what I think we need (to do.)
Just like magic! I was just wondering that with all the news!! :). Great presentation (as always)!
I really enjoy your vids. You are fun to watch as I pack a few mote bits knowledge in this old brain!
What a wonderful thought experiment!!
If you build the telescope from local materials then sure! But if you are sending it from Earth then just leave it in orbit around Mars or put it on Phobos. Or maybe on top of Olympus Mons :-)
Olympus Mons isn't really that high on planetary scales. Phobos might be better than even the moon because the gravity there is tiny so they don't need to be very strong.
By the time we get to the point where we could build a telescope of the kind that would be of benefit to science, from 'local materials', surely we would be a point where launch costs are so trivial that its given as much consideration as getting a car delivered from the factory to the showroom?
@NotPoodle I don't think so. Launching from Earth will likely always require a lot of energy: to get out of a strong gravity well, you need rockets with high reaction mass, but those have relatively low specific impulse, and thus the Rocket Equation requires that you spend much more of mass in fuel than payload that you actually get to send to space.
A space elevator, or some kind of clever momentum exchange tether would change that. But I would be surprised if we had one of those before a permanent colony on Mars.
Your personal reactions to Q&A is commendable!! By the way, is it a Star-of-David on your neck ??
Really what we need is a manned orbital observatory, or rather, a station floating beside an observatory (no reason to let vibration cross). Instead of sending up a new reflector with every instrument, we send up a single reflector and let a man with a spanner replace the instruments as required. No need for billions spent on perfect robotics if you are going to have a person there anyway, and regular launches to bring spare parts. Orbital assembly alone cuts the weight down to a fraction due to not having to have a telescope that is strong enough to survive 3+G and extreme vibration. When you get it to orbit, and realise it doesn't work, you fix it till it does, rather than the current 'might not work', fix it, still might not work, fix it, till you have spent 10x the budget, launch the thing, and you have to repair it anyway.
I always thought this would be one of the first tasks for the ISS. One F9 launch would put a huge segmented mirror up to the ISS and unlike JST it doesn't need a fancy unfolding mechanism. Just bolt it together like meccano. An F9 launch probably wouldn't cost any more than ground based site preparation (roads on tall volcanoes aren't cheap) and a dome (construction on top of tall volcanoes isn't cheap). The mirror can be cheaper than ground based one because it doesn't need to resist flexing in gravity and doesn't need to be actively distorted to counter atmospheric distortion.
Love your work. Very informative and you explain the details in a manner even I can understand.
Mars is a fascinating subject. Thank you for putting this one to bed. Perhaps you have already addressed - you said here "more telescopes in space, closer to home" - If looking at the proponents of Giant Magellen and the European ELT and so on, they go to great pains to taut their respective abilities to actively compensate for atmospheric distortion, and suggest, without saying so, "Who needs space ?" Of course, you indirectly addressed that here when talking about where in the spectrum our atmosphere is opaque and nearly so -- so why do we build the space telescopes we do (JWST emphasizes the IR) and are we building the right ones, and what next should be on the list ?
The main problem with building things on Mars (or the Moon) is the fantastic cost of getting stuff to the surface. It's better to stop half-way, so to speak, and build in space. Also, with zero gravity, there's no physical limit to how big you can make your mirror. The Webb telescope is limited by the fact that it had to be squeezed onto the top of a single rocket, but you could send a huge mirror up in segments. Manned missions would probably be needed to assemble the thing, but we already know how to do that.
Sounds like Dr. Becky was singing part of Blinded by the Light at the end.
Reminded me of the Vacant Lot sketch about that song: ua-cam.com/video/U9_3nQFNy-w/v-deo.html
@@abitoftheuniverse2852 That was funny.
We have quite an interesting experiment in the undergrad labs using IR spectroscopy to characterise certain metal complexes. Throughout the day, in the reruns of the background you can see the increase in the CO2 and H2O as people....well do people things. its a great way of showing the undergrads how IR can be used in atmospheric analysis as well as chemical characterisation.
Becky! Olympus Mons! 25km high puts it "out of the atmosphere" (in practice, I think around 72 pascals, 8% of the pressure at Mars sea lev... at Mars reference) - about 0.05% of earth's atmosphere. That's gotta help, surely!
Fantastic video! I learned so much in a very easy and fun way :) Keep up the good work Doc.
Dr. Becky, if the universe is expanding, what force drove them to expand? if we consider dark energy, then the analogy fitting would be like an elastic sheet and on it are galaxies. Stretch the sheet by holding each end and you will notice that both ends of the sheet stretch longer than the inner part thus galaxies that are very far from the inner sheet, travels faster?
Love your channel. I have a question about Mars. Is it older than earth? Not sure if the answer is possible. The reason I ask, is it possible that the earth will render to the same demise as mars? Lifeless and inhabitable. I understand the geological time frame for this to occur. I was curious whether we can date the age of planets other than our own.
Cool video, and good job! You're getting much better at audio!
Next, I think, is working on the camera's settings. The brightness was fluttering up and down a lot. ;)
We always tend to think of the cost of putting up a new instrument. I'd like to see repurposing of existing space assets. All that stuff floating around collected and remade by a space recycling and manufacturing center could, possibly, send thousands of instruments around the solar system. Of course we'd have to figure in meteor strikes and the failures, but if your churning out thousands of units the shear numbers could mean a guaranteed base to rely on. Yes, I know... pie in the sky, but hey! We all dream!
I love the way you pronounce methane, some people would criticize each other's foreign way to pronounce things.
Mars has another advantage; parallax. We can message the distance to objects directly by taking a photo of it and six months later, when the Earth is on the other side of the Sun, we take another and compare the difference in its angle. But lots of things are so far away that even this doesn't work. With Mars the half year (23 months) change of position is even greater meaning we could directly message things that are further away.
Yup, space telescopes is the way to go..Excellent channel, subbed.
Infrared Blocking Bovine Flatulence is the title of my prog rock concept album.
Hello, Dr. Becky!
I'm a bit late but I do have a question: if the Earth's atmosphere were to disappear, and considering that we wouldn't die and stuff, would we be able to see more stars and planets from earth by the naked eye? Or would it still require especial leanses and telescopes? And what do you think about technology to change a planet's atmosphere, is there or could exist such thing? For instance, trying to convert the carbon dioxide on Mars to oxygen, and maybe start playing with it to make it liveable?
Thanks a bunch!
Dr. Becky... I love your videos. But was it really necessary to put Blinded by the light into my brain... It always refuses to leave in a timely manner ;)
I'm only going to address the Radio Astronomy part of the vid. First problem is who would set the "Table of Frequency Allocations ( Table 5 in ITU Handbook?) for Mars? Second, you don't have to have a solid reflector on the radio astronomy "dish" a piece of fine mesh would do. Third, it doesn't have to be a dish - I think there's a very low frequency transit array in the Netherlands. For the Moon, the second and third solutions would work too but the first problem doesn't exist - the frequencies are already allocated.
Cool to imagine anything as a possibility. Nice talk.
You're so modest, if I had a PhD in astrophysics it was be framed with flashing lights to make people realize it.
Dust? There's a hint at a partial solution on your shirt. Olympus Mons's status as the largest volcano in the solar system became apparent when it was the only surface feature not covered by the global dust storm that raged when Mariner 9 arrived. Also, the pressure is like 70 pascals there, about 1/8th the mean surface pressure.
Markle2k I did chat about that too but it got cut!
@@DrBecky Extended Director's cut with added commentary, collector's bluray limited edition?
Wouldn’t the problem there be trying to find a nice level spot to land and set it up at?
@@eds1942 Maps of the large martian volcanoes all show calderas with convenient flat areas. These are above the majority of the martian atmosphere. The true summit could be flattened with excavation equipment for large optical telescopes.
Olympus Mons is higher above mean martian surface than Mt. Everest and is 72 kilometers wide at the summit.
Another interesting candidate would be asteroids with highly elliptical orbits that would carry observatories beyond the inner solar system.
Arrays of these wold provide a wider baseline at aphelion and would be accessible during perihelion. For example, the orbit of Halley's Comet has an eccentricity of 0.9671, so that while its perihelion brings it well within Earth's orbit, the outer leg of the comet's path takes it to a distance of some 35 AU from the Sun, far beyond the orbit of Neptune.
volcano.oregonstate.edu/oldroot/volcanoes/planet_volcano/mars/Shields/Overview.html
@@jamesdriscoll9405 That's a usage of the word 'accessible' that I wasn't previously aware of.
PS: 70 km/s relative to Earth and only turns up for service/instrument swap, every 75ish years. I struggle to think of anywhere less accessible.
I have always been a mess in physics during highschool but astronomy is just too beautiful.
Putting something like the JWST in orbit or an array of radio telescopes would be awsome.
Optical and dust storms, there'd be maintenance issues.
Those Martian dust storms would also do a great job of scouring the telescope's mirrors.
Dr. Becky - you are really, really good - thanks a lot...
Yay! Loved this video. Lots of digestible thinks I'd never really thunk before. Thanks, Becky (and Nicholas). :)
Why not use Olympus Mons? Should be above most dust and atmosphere. A couple of sheets of plastic should protect the disk from dust and small meteorites. (Two sheets because you will be replacing them relatively often. Might as well not leave the mirror uncovered. Choosing the right plastic you might be able to hold the piece vertically, and heat up an area to repair it. For larger holes it might be possible to squeeze a dab on the spot and use two warm flat irons to complete a repair.)
Is there a largest practical space-based radio telescope diameter (combining signals from different telescopes launched in opposite directions), and what is it, and what resolutions might be achieved (what types of things/features might we hope to see, e.g. large boulders on exoplanets?).
Other than more accurate parallax measurements is there any reason to build on Mars rather than the moon? In orbit of Mars would give that same benefit without the atmospheric issues.
Building and maintaining it on the ground with locally sourced materials is the only real benefit yes?
X-rays would also be scattered from Rayleigh scattering. View of x-rays bouncing off the surface is different than being on the surface looking up. It’s called the shower curtain effect. The source of scatter is closer to you when you’re on the surface.
Solar system sized radio telescope. If they can figure out how to sync them... would be marvelous!
Just found your channel. I subscribed immediately. Thank you.
the dust would be a deal-breaker wouldn't it? just watched the video... awesome explanation, thanks :)
Commenting before watching: YES, because: cool!
*Question* Is it possible to use a wormhole for travel? Cause wormhole to me means "fancy black hole" and not even light can escape a black hole. So shouldnt worm hole travel be impossible? Sure you connect two areas of space but whats the point? Thanks :)
At one point you say that water vapor can distort the image and gave the example of a mirage. A mirage is not water vapor but different temperature air layers. My understanding is that water vapor itself it optically transparent but when it condenses into clouds it can scanter light - but not produce distortions. The distortions are from temperature differences.
We should put telescopes on Pluto. The Sun is much dimmer there, so you could observe for more of the day without the sky turning opaque.
You're not wrong, but the analogy might be trying to get to space by building a bigger skyscraper. It helps but is more expensive the farther you go to the point where the cost of less viewing hours is far outweighed by the cost of getting there.
I don't really think we should put telescopes on pluto. At least not until we're going to pluto regularly or have a colony there.
I'm sure it could be useful, but I think it's better to put a very large telescope in space instead. A telescope in space can be moved to view anything, and it can collect light for more than a few hours since there are no horizon issues that you would have on a planet.
Isn't Olympus Mons' peak basically above Martian atmosphere?
Wouldn't that mean that observatories located there wouldn't have to worry about radiation windows, Raleigh scattering, or dust storms? Or at least a lot less?
Indeed, and it's not like Mount Everest like peak either, but there are wide flat areas to build on. However, it's almost impossible to land a probe there with current technology (no aerobraking), but potentially, an interesting location even if the far side of the Moon is so much more suitable.
It is actually cow burps that produce the most methane.
Frank Walsh one afternoon with my boyfriend might change your mind 😒
Okay, so the moon doesn't have an atmosphere to shield your telescope from incoming space rocks.
How is that any different from being in orbit? Has the Hubble taken a lot of damage from meteorites and such?
At least having a telescope ground-based on the moon would make any service or repair easier, since an astronaut would have something to stand on while he/she worked, and wouldn't have to worry about things floating away if they were dropped.
Am I just missing something here?
Isn't the speed that Mars (or the Moon) move with also important when considering building telescopes on a planet?
I'm an amateur photographer and to the quality of my pictures, it's important that my camera doesnt move as I take the picture.
Doesn't telescopes have verry long shutter times?
The Earth moves, too.
Yes we should put more telescopes in space. Not sure where but would putting them farther out from our orbit make any difference?
Excellent exploration of a fascinating topic .
This is amazing. Super informative. Thanks!
Seeing today’s Percy photos from Mars of own galaxy convinces me a telescope would be awesome for more parallax measurements. Now to figure out how to deal with dust storms!
The Earth's orbit around the Sun is enough to get parallax measurements on the billion closest stars. Look up the Gaia mission. Putting Gaia around Mars would help a little, but not much.
It genuinely took me a moment when looking at the 3/2/19 date stamp on your Twitter feed to remember that you are not in a fact a time traveler, but from the UK where the dates are written reversed from what I'm accustomed to.
You are a very entertaining Dr Becky. I love your videos and your beautiful blue eyes make me swoon. Thank you.
We should put a radio telescope in orbit around Mars, so we'd get the distance benefit without the atmosphere getting in the way... And if Mars is colonized by that point, as was hypothesized at the beginning of the video, then there'd be people to monitor the telescope locally, so you wouldn't have the communication problem
A radio relay system would be needed. Since Mars rotates on an axis, the telescope would face away from Earth at certain times. Don't forget that radio transmissions travel at the speed of light, thus, it takes 21 minutes for a message to reach Mars from Earth and Vice versa.
OMG, need to have a gif made of the 2 seconds starting at 16:58! That was sooooo funny!
Dr. Becky, are you saying, at about the 5min mark that IF, if there were a pulsar close enough to earth to be visible that we would not have been able to see it until Yuri Gagarin went up?!?!
@Dr. Becky Just a little correction. You said that the higher the wavelength, the higher the resolution, when I'm pretty sure you meant to say the lower the wavelength the higher the resolution. Theta is the inverse of the resolution rather than proportional to the resolution.
Also, wouldn't a telescope on Mars give a more accurate measurement of parallax, since the orbital diameter is larger? That would be useful
If you put the telescope on the top of Olympus Mons, you would be above 99% of the Martian atmosphere.
Another advantage of telescopes on Mars is Parallax. If we want to see how far (nearby) stars are from us, we can look at the change of angle compared to distant stars 6 months apart (when Earth is at opposite sides of its orbit). Doing that on Mars will be more accurate because Mars' orbit is significantly larger than Earth's.
Warm regards, Rick.
sing it!!! :) loved the video. so i have a question. IF 2 neutron stars were to collide from being flung off from, lets say a bianary system, could there be a potential of them fracturing and the pieces flying off into space instead of merging with the expected nova? and if the sections were to fly apart how would you calculate the gravitational mass after it was severed from the parent star?
Olympus Mons! If you want to build a telescope on the surface of Mars then you would do the same thing as here on earth for the same reasons and go to Olympus Mons. It basically sticks out of the Martian atmosphere and so would be almost like building a telescope on the moon. Anyone who has wasted their time thinking about planets instead of doing the studying that they should be doing would know that.
Was Nicholas Heavens deliberately trying to look like Jim Carry from his dumb and bumber role?
17:19 props for the Springsteen tune. I wouldn't have thought that someone who has brought up the song that you talked about in one video would know that 1970's gem. Please tell me that you were making fun of Bruce and don't think that those are the real lyrics though. Of course you don't think those are the real lyrics. I dare you to analyze the lyrics of that song and do a video on what he was really talking about through the whole thing.
Hey, Dr_Becky - nice channel! I appreciate getting real info from a real scientist, as opposed to conspiracy channel claptrap. Hence the subscription.
I noticed you suggested that putting a scope on the Moon might not be a good idea, given the possibility of getting hit by a meteorite; you showed the fascinating shot of the moon getting struck during the recent lunar eclipse.
I've given that one a bit of thought, and I think the chance of having your scope hit by a meteorite on the moon would be a good deal lower than the chance of suffering a hit on the Hubble. My reason for arriving at this conclusion is that the Hubble is also in vacuum, hence unprotected; but it is in a much deeper gravity well, and so should be experiencing a higher micrometeorite count than a similar sized scope on the lunar surface would.
In general, a scope on the Moon should not be in any greater danger than a similarly sized scope in orbit around Earth. Actually, when we account for not only the bigger gravity well but also the tens of thousands of objects we've put in orbit around our planet, I think an Earth orbit based telescope would be in even greater danger. I'm told that even a fleck of paint can be dangerous at orbital speeds.
But I do worry about the dust on the Moon not being eroded; that is, Lunar dust particles have very sharp edges, and are very abrasive. This can get into mechanical mechanisms and literally grind them to pieces. The Apollo astronauts experienced this on their suits; the rotating cuffs suffered extreme wear. We've all seen the film of the Apollo 17 lunar rover bounding across the surface of the moon, throwing up big fans of lunar dust from the wheels; I suspect that the vehicle would have had a very limited lifespan. It was probably just as well the astronauts left it behind.
So I think the Moon would be a great location for an optical scope; but the designers would have to take into account the extremely abrasive characteristics of lunar dust. Oh, and if the Moon is a good location for an optical telescope, then I would think the far side of the Moon would be a spectacular location for a radio telescope; it would have the entire bulk of the Moon acting as a radio wave barrier, blocking out radio waves from Earth with thousands of miles of rock.
Thanks for a great channel! Regards, Charlie
what about as an asteroids detection thing?
Is their any valuable reason to do so?
and what about the space telescope that would sit behind the planets? like the jwst?