Word: moons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...atmosphereless moon, optical telescopes can be used continuously; no clouds, air currents or air pollution can impede viewing. Were the giant, 200-in. optical telescope at Mt. Palomar to be duplicated on the lunar surface, for example, it could observe stars that are 10,000 times too faint for it to detect through the earth's atmosphere...
Because the moon rotates on its axis only about one-thirtieth as fast as the earth, stars move slowly across the lunar skies, making it easier to track and photograph them. Because lunar gravity is only one-sixth the earth's, structural distortions caused by the sheer weight of large telescope mirrors and their supports will be dramatically lessened. Some scientists have estimated that telescope mirrors as large as 2,000 in. in diameter (ten times the earth's largest) could be used effectively on the moon...
...moon has equally great advantages for radio telescopes, which in recent years have greatly expanded the observable universe, locating quasars and discovering pulsars and other strange celestial objects. Not all radio frequencies can penetrate earth's atmosphere; on the lunar surface, radio telescopes will be able to pick up the entire spectrum of these frequencies. Furthermore, by building radio telescopes on the back side of the moon, astronomers will be able to escape completely from the radio interference caused by earth's increasingly electronic civilization. Without the background "noise" to contend with, radio astronomers will be able to detect much...
California Institute of Technology Astronomer Fritz Zwicky believes that observations from the moon will quickly yield answers to two major astronomical problems. With telescopes on the moon, scientists can take more definitive spectrums from the light of remote stars, and perhaps obtain decisive data about the universal "red shift" of light (caused by the speeding outward of distant galaxies). By precisely measuring the shift?and thus the speed of recession?of these galaxies, scientists should be able to determine whether the universe will continue to expand eternally or eventually stop and then begin contracting. "It could settle once...
Scientists acknowledge the obvious difficulties and great costs of transporting large telescopes and other heavy equipment to the moon. To obviate the problem, Rand Corp. Researcher George Kocher suggests actually building a large mirror on the lunar surface, using quartz produced from silica?if it exists on the moon?and giving it a more accurate surface than terrestrial mirrors by shaping it with ion beams (which are effective only in a vacuum) instead of abrasives. Several astronomers have pointed out that round lunar craters lined with chicken wire would make ideal reflectors for radio telescopes similar...