NASA NIAC Funds Giant Lunar Crater Telescope

An ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon has tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based and Earth-orbiting telescopes. Above – Notional view of LCRT on the far-side of the Moon. Credits: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay Concept of operations for building LCRT. Credits: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay Benefits will include: (i) Such a telescope can observe the universe at …

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Carnival of Space 639 – 75 Temporary Moons Should Be Detected Over the Next Ten Years

The Carnival of Space 639 is up at Urban Astronomer. Universe Today – The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Could Find More of Earth’s Transient Moons. Earth also has a population of what are known as “transient Moons”. These are a subset of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that are temporarily scooped up by Earth’s gravity and assume …

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Path to Detecting All Blackholes in the Universe All the Time

Gravity Wave detections are rapidly increasing. The first gravity wave was detected in 2015. The science needed to accomplish this is described in the Veratasium videos below. They needed to create single wavelength lasers and use one-megawatt of power to detect differences of one trillionth of a wavelength. Gravitational-wave astronomy is a completely new way …

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US Spy Satellites at Diffraction Limit for Resolution Since 1971

The image tweeted by Trump was at about 10-centimeter resolution. It was likely a picture taken by the US224 satellite. This was one of the upgraded keyhole satellites that have the same mirror as the Hubble Telescope (2.4 meters). It was widely known for many years that the Keyhole spy satellites were using the same …

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Super-thin X-ray Mirrors Will Make X-Ray Space Telescope 100 Times Better

Super-thin, lightweight X-ray mirrors made of silicon can make next-generation X-ray space telescopes. Above – Goddard scientist Will Zhang holds mirror segments made of silicon. These X-ray optics have been baselined for the proposed Lynx X-ray Observatory. Credits: Chris Gunn/NASA X-ray mirror technology being developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has been baselined for …

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Carnival of Space 615

Carnival of Space 615 is up at Urban Astronomer. Universe Today – Subaru Telescope Sees 1800 Supernovae Japanese astronomers have captured images of an astonishing 1800 supernovae. 58 of these supernovae are the scientifically-important Type 1a supernovae located 8 billion light-years away. Type 1a supernovae are known as ‘standard candles’ in astronomy. A supernova is …

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Developing Low-Cost Giant Space Telescopes Adapted to Zero-G

By altering the very premise upon which all prior telescopes rely, The High Étendue Multiple Object Spectrographic Telescope (THE MOST) overcomes all of these problems: aperture, collection area, field-of-view, spectrographic performance, and compact size. Startling, THE MOST does it at lowered cost they proved in their NIAC Phase I. They proved that THE MOST could …

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