Telescope on pluto

[kiwiak]

Recently i was reading about liquid mirror telecopes.

And i rememberd scene from space odyssey voyage to the planets tv show - astronauts placed telescope on pluto.

Woudl placing such telescope on pluto rather than on moon have some advantages?

[Red Iron Crown]

No advantage that I can see, plus it would have the disadvantage of degraded imagery due to Pluto's thin atmosphere, which isn't a factor on the Moon. And it would be a lot more costly to put anything on Pluto.

[Sirrobert]

Minimal light pollution from the sun, thus the clearest possible image

[kiwiak]

Minimal light pollution from the sun, thus the clearest possible image

Woudl it affect also night side observations?

[Red Iron Crown]

There's no light pollution without atmosphere. Don't point the telescope directly at the Sun and it won't affect observations.

[Scotius]

Scattered light from Earth could pose a problem. Solution: place the telescope on the far-side of the Moon. After sunset you would have two weeks of perfectly black sky.

[DonLorenzo]

On pluto you have a lot slower motion around the sun (and on our moon it's even worse, it goes around the earth every month!) so you can stare at the same spot for much longer at once. That's one thing I can imagine

[Scotius]

Then why bother with building 'scope on the surface of a planet? Build another Hubble with plenty of control authority. This way we could keep it aimed at one spot for months.

[Red Iron Crown]

Scattered light doesn't matter unless you're trying to image something very close to the body's limb. Hubble works fine on the dayside of Earth.

[kiwiak]

Then why bother with building 'scope on the surface of a planet? Build another Hubble with plenty of control authority. This way we could keep it aimed at one spot for months.

Liquid mirror telescope requires gravity.

Although in space odyssey tv show they probably didnt used such thing.

[DonLorenzo]

Then why bother with building 'scope on the surface of a planet? Build another Hubble with plenty of control authority. This way we could keep it aimed at one spot for months.

One thing I can think of is that the surface of a planet (like pluto, which is a cold dead rock with no tectonics and stuff) is a lot more stable than any attitude control system is going to be. Also it won't fail. Just guessing though

[andrewas]

Liquid mirror telescope requires gravity.

So build a liquid mirror scope with an ion drive, lots of fuel, a couple RTGs and a really big transmitter dish. As a bonus, you can actually aim the thing where a planetary telescope can only look straight up.

(No, I have not done the math, but it should be possible, just get the rotation slow enough and keep the thrust steady.