Telescopes for The Space and Ground Observatories

The exploration, some advantages of radio telescopes would be that radio waves are not blocked by clouds and are not interfering with the Earth’s atmosphere; radio telescopes can catch signals and movements during cloud cover. A disadvantage for having a ground telescope is that the infrared from the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs most of the ultraviolet and almost all of the infrared light that flows through it. The Space Telescopes on the other hand, can see the waves happening there.

Completing astronomy from observatories that are ground-based on Earth is limited by the filtering and colliding of electromagnetic radiation (scintillation or twinkling) due to the atmosphere. Space observatories can generally be divided into two classes: missions which map the entire sky (surveys), and observatories which focus on selected astronomical objects or parts of the sky. A couple of terrestrial telescopes can reduce atmospheric effects with adaptive sights. A telescope that orbits Earth outside the atmosphere is more predictive neither to twinkling nor to light pollution from fake light sources on Earth. As a result of this happening, the angular resolution of space telescopes is often much smaller in size than a ground-based telescope with a comparison that is the same aperture.

Space and ground observatories’ erase working ranges compared against atmospheric transparency windows that are found by telescopes. Frequency ranges are important mainly to space-based astronomy which is outside the optical window and the radio window, the only two wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum that are not affected by the atmosphere. For example, when done from Earth X-ray astronomy is nearly impossible, and has reached its current importance in astronomy only due to orbiting X-ray telescopes such as the Chandra observatory and the XMM-Newton observatory (“Telescope History”, 2011). Another that is largely blocked is Infrared and ultraviolet. These are all great things that have occurred but all great advantages do come with a price. Space telescopes are much more expensive to build than ground-based telescopes, simply due to their location, and space telescopes are also extremely difficult to maintain. The Hubble Space Telescope was serviced by the Space Shuttle while many other space telescopes cannot be serviced at all. The process to solve the problem for fixing telescopes is what is next on the list for finding the solution for.

Although, telescopes are thought of mainly as looking up into the sky at night from Earth. They’re mainly used in space for discoveries about space, but the stereotype is true. Telescopes are used on Earth for space exploration; they’re radio and optical telescopes. A disadvantage of telescopes on Earth is the light affects them the most, which is infrared and ultraviolet light. This is the most by the Earth’s atmosphere. Telescopes must therefore always be positioned high above the ground or in space so that the light will not hit the telescope and break the lens or the telescope itself. NASA has not yet recorded that a telescope has been hit or damaged by light or action of anything and destroyed a telescope (“Telescopes- NASA”, 2015).

In 2003, NASA decided to start the plan to have a mission called “NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer”. This is to help better understand the formation of galaxies, which was the main purpose of the launch. The studies that were discovered and kept were the shape, brightness, size and distance of galaxies beyond the universe. Since its launch, “GALEX” (nickname for Galaxy Evolution Explorer) has captured images of more than a half-billion objects across two-thirds of the sky. The telescope’s first observation, of the sky in the constellation Hercules, was credited to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. GALEX has detected star formation in unexpected regions of the universe and spotting Mira, a fast-moving older star called a red giant (“Telescopes,” 2003). There are of course other missions being pursued by NASA, ESA and other space agencies; some are already up and space, while others are only in the beginning phases, and will eventually be up in space.

The importance of telescopes and why they are used are for space exploration is mainly because it is almost impossible to see anything in space with the human eye. Telescopes show a view of images, ideas, and observations that are impossible to see without the use of telescopes. They collect light that human eyes are unable to collect. Astronomers use telescopes to see the colors in space, and they collect the light they see from the telescopes that the naked eye cannot collect from looking up into space. Telescopes and their progress throughout time and space exploration have been a huge success. They have had many large impacts with space exploration but have also had large indents with the discovery of space and the galaxies, and also the formation of the stars. What’s next for the use of telescopes in space exploration is what is next on the list. Although we do know that NASA is trying to have another launch in June of 2019, according to NASA and what they are telling sources. Expect to see New Horizons in the future with telescopes capturing moments and images that have never been seen before. China is also trying to perform a launch of their own into space, making China the third nation to produce a launch into space with telescopes.