It's just my opinion, but I think so and here are some of the reasons why: 1. Hubble heats up and cools down every orbit (i.e. sunlight vs shadow) - I think this is one of the reasons why they had to replace the solar panels. 2. Stability in general - on the moon you would be on a nice solid stable surface. 3. Possibility of much, much longer integration times. The earth gets in the way of your FOV quite a lot in orbit - so you would have to slew to a different object or wait until the earth is out of your FOV. On the moon you could observe the same object for close to two weeks straight. Obviously, the Hubble Space telescope does a fantastic job, but, I think for future hopefully - larger scopes the moon makes sense. The Hubble replacement telescope (Webb) won't be in a servicable orbit, whereas (big assumption here) assuming there is a permanent moon base - a moon based scope would be servicable.
-----Original Message----- From: Richard Tenney [mailto:retenney@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 3:24 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: RE: [Utah-astronomy] Bush: Back to Moon
Is there any advantage to a lunar based scope vs. a space based scope (in earth orbit)? Seems that one closer to home is a lot easier (not to mention cheaper) to upgrade and service, or...?
Rich
--- Dale Hooper <Dale.Hooper@sdl.usu.edu> wrote:
I think we should start it off by landing a Hubble "equivalent-sized" telescope or better on the moon which would eventually be serviced by the future astronauts. The telescope would have to be powered by RTG's (2 weeks of dark) and solar (2 weeks of light).