Russia launches space telescope with eye on distant solar systems

[Judi Lynn]

Russia launches space telescope with eye on distant solar systems
Jul 18, 2011, 13:36 GMT

Moscow - Russia's national space agency Roskosmos on Monday launched a space observation radio telescope capable of viewing distant solar systems and the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

A rocket taking off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur space centre placed the space vehicle, called the RadioAstron astrophysical observatory, in a stable but highly elliptical orbit, Roskosmos officials told the Interfax news agency.

The 3.8-tonne telescope will deploy a 10-metre antenna and communicate with ground stations to provide the highest-resolution images ever seen of distant bodies in space, said Viktor Khartov, a Roskosmos spokesman.

With its elliptical orbit the RadioAstron radio telescope, or as it is called in Russia - the Spectrum-R, will circle the Earth at varying altitudes.

More:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1651772.php/Russia-launches-space-telescope-with-eye-on-distant-solar-systems

[somone]

1. A radio telescope named RadioAstron

They didn't want to name it RadioTelescope?

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. resolution will be a thousand times sharper than America’s Hubble

One article


http://rt.com/news/radioastron-telescope-launch-space/

I can't wait to see what it finds.

[Lionel Mandrake]

3. That's ridiculous.

The Hubble's resolution is about .05 arc-second. That's 1/20 of 1/3600 of a degree, or 1/4 of a millionth of a radian. This is roughly the ratio of the wavelength of visible light (say .5 micrometer) to the diameter of the primary mirror (2.4 m). No radio telescope can match this resolution.

The RadioAstron telescope has a diameter of 10 m. Suppose the wavelength is 1 cm. (Any smaller value would be millimeter waves, not radio waves.) The resolution would then be approximately a .001 radian, which is 4000 times LESS SHARP than the Hubble.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Well, Russian news reports

what can I say.