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'Radio telescope' is presumably what is required, right enough, but if you are actually interested, you can tell more than that from the photograph. If you look closely, you will see that as well as the big parabolic dish in the foreground, there is another, apparently more or less identical, in the distance.
This is a clue to the fact that this particular unit is actually part of a much larger matrix of instruments, working together by something called 'aperture synthesis'. If you connect lots of radio telescopes, spread out over several square miles, correctly, then by use of interferometry, you can make the array work like one single telescope several square miles in area.
The reason this is important is the way electromagnetic radiation works. The resolution of a telescope (the amount of detail it can see) is limited by the ratio of the diameter of its mirror to the wavelength of the radiation it is collecting.
In a 1-meter diameter optical telescope, that ratio is about 10 million to one. Now imagine that you want the same resolution from a radio telescope working at a wavelength of 30 cm. The mirror (the big parabolic dish) would have to be more than a thousand km across - an engineering impossibility. Using an array of telescopes, like the one in the photograph, it is possible to get to a scale of km - and modern technology makes even larger collaborative telescopes possible..
This is a clue to the fact that this particular unit is actually part of a much larger matrix of instruments, working together by something called 'aperture synthesis'. If you connect lots of radio telescopes, spread out over several square miles, correctly, then by use of interferometry, you can make the array work like one single telescope several square miles in area.
The reason this is important is the way electromagnetic radiation works. The resolution of a telescope (the amount of detail it can see) is limited by the ratio of the diameter of its mirror to the wavelength of the radiation it is collecting.
In a 1-meter diameter optical telescope, that ratio is about 10 million to one. Now imagine that you want the same resolution from a radio telescope working at a wavelength of 30 cm. The mirror (the big parabolic dish) would have to be more than a thousand km across - an engineering impossibility. Using an array of telescopes, like the one in the photograph, it is possible to get to a scale of km - and modern technology makes even larger collaborative telescopes possible..
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It's a radio telescope.
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Life isnt worth living unless youre willing to take some big chances and go for broke.
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Just guessing, but I'd say the answer to the next question
you are going to ask is "Refractor"
you are going to ask is "Refractor"