NAS Panel Details Advantages Of A Large Telescope in Space
DOI: 10.1063/1.3021925
In still another National Academy of Sciences report on US needs in astronomy, an ad hoc panel of the Space Sciences Board argues that a large (120‐inch aperture) space telescope could help answer many of today’s basic questions. Operated in orbit or on the moon, such an instrument could study objects five magnitudes fainter and ten times further away than is possible on earth. The panel says that the space telescope would be able to make the first measurements of the density, composition and physical state of the gas that surrounds galaxies, an important clue to galactic evolution. The eight‐man committee, headed by Lyman Spitzer Jr. (Princeton), added that the telescope’s chief value might well lie, however, in the discovery of entirely new classes of objects.
