Radio age (Jan 1927-Jan 1928)

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26 RADIO AGE for September, 1927 1=1 (Current ^cience | Astronomer Plans $12,000,000 Telescope By JAMES STOKLEY Science Service Staff Writer (Copyright, 1927, by Science Service, Inc.) THE astronomer is never satisfied. Recently Dr. Edwin Hubble, of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, estimated that he had observed nebulae in the sky so far distant that their light takes 140,000,000 years to reach us. As light travels 186,000 miles in a single second, these distant objects are something like 840 million million million miles away. And yet the human eye desires to see still farther, and better. To do this three things are necessary, in the opinion of Dr. Hubble. His views are shared by other astronomers. First of all, astronomers need better photographic plates. Then they need more big telescopes in the southern hemisphere. Lastly, they need one or more super-giant telescopes. Such an instrument has already been planned by Francis G. Pease, builder of the great 100-inch reflecting telescope at Mt. Wilson — the one with which Dr. Hubble worked. The need of the big telescopes in the southern hemisphere arises from the shape of the globe on which we live. Unless a telescope is precisely on the equator, there is a piece of the sky that it can never observe. If the telescope is in the northern hemisphere, like those in the United States, there is a large circular area, centered at the South Pole of the heavens, which never rises above the horizon at all. And a still larger circle of stars never rises high enough to be really satisfactorily observed. The equator is not the ideal loca One hundred-inch reflecting telescope of the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, now the largest in the world tion for a telescope, however. While on this imaginary line it is theoretically possible to see every star in the heavens at some time or other, those around both poles never rise very high. The best way to do is to have two telescopes. One should be well to the north of the equator, the other well to the south. For many years several American observatories have had branches in southern countries. The Lick Ob