[HN Gopher] Building telescopes on the Moon could transform astr...
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Building telescopes on the Moon could transform astronomy
Author : CharlesW
Score : 59 points
Date : 2023-04-19 21:23 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| double2helix wrote:
| The catch-22 is the influx of lunar traffic will create some
| noise interference on the "dark side" of the moon. Still less
| than that on earth though.
| jrussino wrote:
| This was my first thought when reading the article.
|
| > The lunar far side is permanently shielded from the radio
| signals generated by humans on Earth. During the lunar night,
| it is also protected from the Sun. These characteristics make
| it probably the most "radio-quiet" location in the whole solar
| system as no other planet or moon has a side that permanently
| faces away from the Earth. It is therefore ideally suited for
| radio astronomy.
|
| Maybe we need to treat this as a "pristine natural resource"
| and put some treaties in place now where we agree to limit how
| much we "pollute" this area with RF signals, before it's too
| late?
| joering2 wrote:
| define "too late" ?
| samstave wrote:
| https://youtu.be/5drjr9PmTMA
| rkwasny wrote:
| What? we have a telescope in L2 point(the second Lagrangian
| point)! it is soo much better there compared to the moon
| autokad wrote:
| if we could manufacture the telescopes on the moon, we could
| build massive ones (and size matters). And, why not have both?
| post-it wrote:
| Couldn't we manufacture more massive ones in orbit around the
| moon, since they won't collapse under their own weight? We'd
| need extra fuel to get resources or parts off the surface of
| the moon, but that's nothing in comparison to the fuel needed
| to get off the Earth.
|
| Edit: I forgot the moon has a much lower gravity than Earth.
| It might still be worthwhile to build in orbit, but we can
| build a lot bigger on the moon than on Earth.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Moon orbits are very unstable. Maintaining anything so
| large there for an extended period would be difficult.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It would mass a _lot_ more in orbit, since the moon itself
| is providing most of the structure for the proposed
| telescope.
| csours wrote:
| No mention of dust. The lunar astronauts complained about the
| stuff. There's some weird stuff due to electrical charges not
| being able to dissipate.
|
| I do hope we try it though, speaking from my inner 12 year old.
| psychphysic wrote:
| The charge that causes the issue can also be used to fix it
|
| https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/1...
|
| It would be pretty sweet to have a decent scope on the far side
| of the moon.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| What are the chances of meteorites being a threat? Without an
| atmosphere it is easier for them to reach the ground and cause
| damage.
| joering2 wrote:
| As my understanding goes, Moon is very big and meteors are very
| small and aim/crash rarely. You can look at its surface and
| assume there is activity all the time but because of lack of
| atmosphere anything that touches the surface leaves footprints
| for thousands of years. Armstrong footprint is still there.
| cdot2 wrote:
| More like millions of years
| freeqaz wrote:
| Man, this really excites me! I hadn't even thought about this
| before, but it seems super obvious now. Especially the bit in the
| article about putting a telescope at one of the poles inside of a
| crater (to shield from sunlight).
|
| I'm surprised this proposal hasn't been tried sooner. Is this
| because the cost per pound to send something into space has
| gotten cheaper? Why now?
| enlyth wrote:
| Also, Earth's sky will eventually get polluted by things like
| SpaceX satellites, so this would solve that issue as well.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Once Starlink builds up the capacity around the moon to
| handle all the new telescopes' data, won't they have the same
| problem?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We can maintain continuous internet connection from
| anywhere on the surface of the moon to Earth using 2 lunar
| satellites. Using more won't provide any advantages until
| its using a lot of bandwidth.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| If there were a million satellites(which there won't be), and
| they averaged 100 square meters each (which they don't), and
| they were all very close to earth in LEO(like starlink, which
| they aren't), they would take up 0.0000166% of the night sky.
|
| I think we will be okay.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Putting telescopes in higher orbits should handle most of
| that.
| Maursault wrote:
| Discussion began here 9 hours ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35627234
|
| Why is HN taking after reddit so much lately with duplicates?
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| redditors fleeing the eternal september on their site and
| unintentionally causing one on HN
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