Because we’ve got these cool innovations called floppy mirrors and segmented mirrors. Because the mirror won’t be the right shape, light won’t reflect right in your telescope, and your image will come out all distorted. Once a mirror gets to be a certain size, it doesn’t matter that it’s not exactly cloth-it will sag.Īnd it won’t sag enough for you to notice at a glance, but your computer will notice it. The fact is, no matter how hard you tug on the blanket, it’ll always sag a little under its own weight. Sorry for stressing you out about perfection back there, but now you know for yourself that blanket’s never going to stretch tight, don’t you? I don’t want that blanket to hang down at all, you hear me? Try to get that blanket stretched as taut as possible. Have you ever made a fort out of blankets?Īs you’re making your fort, you’ll want to drape the corners of the blankets over the corners of your support structure and tie them down. Let’s make it upwards of 40 meters-because there are honestly telescopes that big. Imagine that you have a really, really, really huge blanket. What does that even mean, until your mirror starts sagging? So bigger, for serious astronomers, is the way to go. It goes hand in hand with light-gathering power-more light means more detail. The bigger the bucket, the more rain you can collect.Īnd resolution means how much detail you can see in an image. Light-gathering power, by the way, just means how much light a telescope can gather-and it works the same way as rain in a bucket. And a longer telescope-meaning, a longer focal length-can actually do wonders for your magnification power. When it comes to telescopes, bigger is always better.īigger means more light-gathering power and better resolution.
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