Thursday, July 7, 2011

Overwhelmingly Large Telescope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telescope

People are talking about the debate to stop funding the James Web Space Telescope.  In this discussion some one brought up the OLT, which is a ground based telescope that would cost $2.2 billion (newest JWST estimate is $6.6 billion) and have much greater resolution than even the JWST.
While the original 100-m design would not exceed the angular resolving power of interferometric telescopes, it would have exceptional light-gathering and imaging capacity which would greatly increase the depth to which humankind could explore the universe. The OWL could be expected to regularly see astronomical objects with an apparent magnitude of 38; or 1,500 times fainter than the faintest object which has been detected by the Hubble Space Telescope.

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