Beating Hubble

Astronomer Craig Mackay of Cambridge University recently used a research telescope in the relatively clean, clear skies around San Diego to take clearer astrophotoes than the Hubble Space Telescope takes.

Mackay's technique is to take many shots per second, take the few clearest, and digitally blend them to produce one supersharp image. Many shots are taken so quickly in an attempt to minimize the effects of Earth's constantly moving atmosphere. The first attempt produced an image about twice as sharp as a Hubble shot, and Mackay thinks the technique will do even better. At a cost of about $100,000, the approach is vastly cheaper than the billions spent on Hubble. That low figure, of course, does not count the cost of constructing the observatories which will use the technique, whereas the Hubble figure includes everything.

Space-based telescopes still have an advantage when extremely long exposure times are necessary. That is a good thing, because NASA and the Europeans are planning to deploy more of them. The advantage huge research scopes on Earth have now over any space-based cousins is size; space scopes are currently limited in size to the largest current launch systems can carry. That will eventually change. Space and low gravity bodies like our Moon allow constructing huge telescopes, in both lense size and focal length. Using several scopes as a connected array could produce the caoability of a telescope that was miles across.

For now, though, Earth-based observatories are still the backbone of astronomical research.