Some people believe that we put astronomical telescopes on high mountaintops or in orbit because

Some people believe that we put astronomical telescopes on...

Key Concepts

Astronomical Distance Scale

The vast distances between Earth and the objects in space mean that a telescope's slight elevation gain, even when placed on a high mountain or in orbit, does not substantially reduce the distance to these objects. Instead, the primary benefit of a higher location is the improved viewing conditions due to reduced atmospheric effects.

Atmospheric Interference

Placing telescopes at high altitudes or in orbit minimizes the amount of atmosphere through which light must travel. This reduction in atmospheric interference—such as turbulence, absorption, and scattering—leads to clearer and more detailed images, as the light from astronomical objects is less distorted than it would be at ground level.

Transcript

00:01 Okay, question 25 is asking, is it reasonable to believe that astronomers put telescopes up on high mountain tops or in orbit around the earth because they want to get closer to the objects that they observe? well, it's understandable as to why people would think that, but that's not an accurate answer.

00:23 See, a telescope on a mountaintop, like the kek telescopes on top of monacaea in horse, hawaii, it rises to about 4 ,200 meters above sea level.

00:44 And well, actually, here's a little bit of trivia for you.

00:47 In terms of base to peak height, monacaea is actually taller than mount everest.

00:53 It's just that more than 50 % of that mountain is below sea level.

00:59 So back to the question at hand.

01:02 And monakea rises about 4 ,200 meters above sea level.

01:09 And even though the keck telescope is higher up off the ground than, say, a telescope at sea level, it's not exactly closer to the stars in the grand scheme of things.

01:23 For example, suppose that the keck telescope wanted to observe the andromeda galaxy.

01:31 Now, the andromeda galaxy is about 2 .5 million light years away.

01:45 So a light year is the distance it takes for light to travel in a year, and that's about 9 .5 trillion kilometers.

01:56 And when you compare the 4 ,200 meter height above sea level that monacaea is, and the 2 .5 million light -year distance to the andromeda galaxy, that distance above sea level is very minuscule compared to the distance to the andromeda galaxy.

02:24 Even the hubble space telescope, which is in orbit around earth, at about 600 kilometers above ground level, is still less than 1 % the distance to the andromeda galaxy.

02:50 So it's not reasonable to believe that astronomers put telescopes up on high mountains or up in space because they want to get closer to the objects that they observe.

03:03 Now, the reasoning behind the locations for these telescopes has to do with earth's atmosphere.

03:11 In earth's atmosphere, there are a lot of these water vapor particles which tend to distort light and other atmospheric particles.

03:22 And up on high mountain tops, there's less atmosphere above these telescopes, so they don't have to worry about light distortion so much...

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