• Question: what is your favourite thing about using the best telescopes?

    Asked by anon-245296 to Sam, Samantha, Nicol, Lori-Ann, Liam, David on 8 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: David Sobral

      David Sobral answered on 8 Mar 2020:

      Pointing the telescope at a place in the sky that to the naked eye or even to a good telescope looks completely empty and dark and then, after a few minutes, getting to see for the first time what no-one saw before. It’s even more exciting when you get to discover or confirm incredibly distant galaxies for which the light has been travelling for over 13 billion years before we got to be the first humans to capture them!

      Also, getting to point the Hubble space telescope and getting e-mails from space telling me that the data is ready to be (literally) downloaded is incredibly cool and something I never thought I would be able to do, ever!

    • Photo: Lori-Ann Foley

      Lori-Ann Foley answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      For me, studying Mars, the best thing is when telescopes like Hubble, up in space, send back close-up pictures of the planets (if you go to hubblesite.org you can see some of the amazing pictures Hubble has sent back – from planets next door to us to some of the earliest galaxies that were formed soon after the Big Bang). I can see the planets in our solar system through my own little telescope, and that is amazing, but to see them up close – the clouds of Jupiter with all their swirling storms, the aurora/northern lights that other planets have, just like on Earth, the ice caps at the north and south poles of Earth. It is the best!

    • Photo: Samantha Faircloth

      Samantha Faircloth answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      I don’t get to use telescopes for my research but I do use microscopes that can see things in great detail – even a single strand of hair can look enormous!

    • Photo: Sam Frampton

      Sam Frampton answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      When I did telescope work I got to travel out to the top of a mountain in the deserts in the US! It was exciting to travel so far away from any town/city. Telescopes need to be away from people so that the light from peoples houses don’t show up in the telescope. Of course, seeing actual images from space is incredible too!

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