Future of Astronomy Astronomy 315 Professor Lee Carkner Lecture 25

Yerkes Observatory 1897

The Future of Astronomy  What would we like to understand better?   Formation of initial galaxies   Properties and numbers of extrasolar planets  Formation and evolution of black holes

Problems and Solutions  We want to study fainter objects   We want better detail   We want to study a broad range of astrophysical phenomena  Use multiwavelength telescopes

Key Initiatives  While much science is done with small and common instruments, there are several large and expensive new projects that we hope will lead to big breakthroughs  Three of these are:    A Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope

Webb Space Telescope   See earliest galaxies   View protoplanetary disks  View planets   To be launched in June 2014  Cost: 4.5 billion dollars

Webb Format  Want to be both high performance and “cheap”   Telescope needs to be cool and so is deployed away from Earth with a large sun shield   To get large mirror to fit in small launch vehicle, mirror folds up

International X-ray Observatory  Joint venture of NASA, ESA, and JAXA   Would have collecting area ~10 times larger than current X-ray telescopes  Would be able to get high resolution X-ray spectra of:   Black hole accretion disks   Hot interstellar X-ray gas  Launch: 2020?

Telescope Properties  The light gathering power of a telescope depends on its area Area =  r 2   The resolution of a telescope depends on its diameter (d) and the wavelength ( ) of light observed   R = (1.22 ) / d  Determines how close two objects can be and still be resolved (smaller  R is better)

Future Ground Based Telescopes   Larger size means spectroscopy and imaging of fainter objects   Extremely Large Telescopes

Current Plans  California universities are building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT)   The ESO has plans for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) of 42 meters   Each will cost about 1 billion dollars

Extremely Large Telescopes   Success of large telescopes depends on adaptive optics   ELT’s would complement space telescopes  For follow up observations that require greater sensitivity

Hobby Eberly Telescope 1997

Telescope Trends  21 st century astronomy versus 20 th century astronomy:   Information technology integral 

Next Time  Meet in planetarium  No homework or downloads