FARSIDE

NASA eyes moon's dark side for astronomy, new telescopes

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2021 21:39:56 +0000

NASA eyes moon's dark side for astronomy, new telescopes Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/19/2021 - 15:39

Paul Brinkmann

From UPI: NASA scientists, as well as astronomers around the world, plan to install lunar observatories in the next few years to peer into the universe's ancient past -- just after the Big Bang.

Science equipment headed to the moon already includes a spectrometer built for launch in early 2022, known as ROLSES, which will study how sunlight charges the slight lunar atmosphere.

The acronym includes the word "sheath," which refers to a field of energy created by sunlight reflecting from the bright lunar surface. And NASA scientists are formulating plans for observatories on the far side of the moon, where darkness and clear sightlines could yield new discoveries about the universe before stars existed.

One bold plan to build a telescope in a lunar crater, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, has received $500,000 for further study. Read more…

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A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe

Anonymous — Sat, 15 May 2021 19:08:51 +0000

A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/15/2021 - 13:08

Eric Betz

From Discover: Some 13.8 billion years ago, our universe burst into being. In a fraction of a second, it ballooned from subatomic to the size of a grapefruit. And as the cosmos grew and grew, it also cooled, until the building blocks of matter — subatomic particles called quarks and gluons — could form. Eventually, this quark soup aggregated into atoms. Atoms merged into larger molecules. Gas filled the universe. Yet the cosmos would sit like this — dark — for hundreds of millions of years before light shone from the first stars and galaxies.

We understand parts of what happened in the early universe. But a huge blank still haunts astronomers. They call it the “dark ages” because, with no starlight to study, they’re left guessing where all the familiar stuff came from. How did we go from a gas-filled universe to the one we now see in the night sky?

“The early universe had no galaxies, just hot stuff. As things cooled off, something had to happen before the galaxies formed,” says Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Honestly, we’ve got lots of stories and lots of predictions, but no measurements.”

Unravelling this mystery is “one of the great objectives of modern-day astronomy,” he adds.

To solve it, scientists and engineers have identified an unlikely location for their work, one that could help shape the next generation of astronomical research: the farside of the moon. Read more...

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Telescopes on the Moon

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 19:32:56 +0000

Telescopes on the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/22/2020 - 13:32

From Launch Pad Astronomy: Telescopes on the Moon has been a dream since the 1830's. But apart from two small telescopes on Apollo 16 and Chang'e-3, we haven't sent any telescopes to the Moon yet. But now that NASA is planning to return to the Moon permanently, astronomers are once again thinking about placing telescopes on the Moon. Watch the video.

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The history and future of telescopes on the Moon

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 18:25:27 +0000

The history and future of telescopes on the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/03/2020 - 12:25

Eric Betz

From Astronomy.com: For radio astronomers, Earth is a noisy place. Many modern electronics leak radio signals, which interfere with the long, faint wavelengths of light studied by radio observatories. And for decades, this invisible light pollution has pushed radio observatories deeper into so-called “radio quiet zones.” This forces radio astronomers far from other people, out to places like the barren Atacama Desert in Chile.

But it’s not just human-made devices that obstruct faint radio signals. Natural phenomena from Earth and the Sun can interfere, too. Adding insult to injury, Earth’s ionosphere — where solar radiation ionizes molecules in our upper atmosphere — blocks the longest radio wavelengths from reaching our planet’s surface at all.

Scientists have long eyed a solution: the farside of the Moon. Because it always faces away from Earth, a radio telescope placed on the lunar farside would be almost completely sheltered from Earth-generated radio noise. There, astronomers would study a range of phenomena that can’t be seen from our planet, or even by Earth-orbiting space telescopes. A telescope on the Moon could show us what happened before the universe formed its first stars and galaxies, or let us see electromagnetic fields around distant exoplanets, revealing extremely subtle yet fundamental properties related to a world’s true potential for hosting life. Read more...

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The Far Side Of The Moon Is The Perfect Place For a Radio Telescope

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 17:26:13 +0000

The Far Side Of The Moon Is The Perfect Place For a Radio Telescope Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2020 - 10:26

We’ve now passed the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and all eyes are back on the Moon. NASA is planning to return to the Moon by 2024 with its Artemis mission, the Chinese have put the Moon firmly in their plans for space exploration, and even SpaceX thinks the Moon is the perfect destination to test out the capabilities of its Starship.

But what can you do with the Moon? Refuel spacecraft with resources drawn from the lunar regolith? Mine its helium 3 for your fusion reactors? Build a lunar amusement park?

In fact, the far side of the Moon might make one of the best platforms we have for radio telescopes. One side of the Moon is completely blocked from Earth’s constantly increasing radio traffic, giving it the perfect view to the most sensitive radio signals in the Universe. Watch the video.

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Moon FARSIDE: Lunar Astronomy Proposal Takes Aim at Cosmic Dark Ages and Exoplanets

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 20:47:45 +0000

Moon FARSIDE: Lunar Astronomy Proposal Takes Aim at Cosmic Dark Ages and Exoplanets Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 12/15/2019 - 13:47

Leonard David

From Space.com: The far side of the moon is an attention grabber for many reasons. A new mission idea capitalizes on those reasons in a project dubbed the Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets, shortened to this enlightened abbreviation: FARSIDE.

The concept would place a low-radio-frequency interferometric array on the far side of the moon. Jack Burns of the �鶹��Ѱ�� and Gregg Hallinan of the California Institute of Technology have sketched out a way to execute the mission in a NASA-funded report published last month. Read more...

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