Replies

When the Hubbel was launched, and later fixed in space, I thought the consensus was that earth based scopes were done..the future was in orbitals copes..because they avoid the distortion of the earth's atmosphere..

Also..aren't Hawaii's active volcanoes a potential danger?

Yes, but then adaptive optics were invented making the Hubble obsolete. There are still good reasons to operate you telescope in space, such as the Kepler planetfinder, which stares at one region of space non-stop (something which no single Earth based telescope could do). There are also bandwidths that are completely blocked by the atmosphere, making orbiting telescopes the only way to go; but atmospheric distortions are no longer an issue.

When the Hubbel was launched, and later fixed in space, I thought the consensus was that earth based scopes were done..the future was in orbitals copes..because they avoid the distortion of the earth's atmosphere.
Also..aren't Hawaii's active volcanoes a potential danger?

Things change - like the shuttle fleet going dark and the newer space-based telescopes moving to ever higher orbits. We learned just how flexible the Hubble could be after 3 upgrade missions to this 'non-maintainable' orbiting telescope, but even at that orbit (567km~), the Hubble was 'bothered' by the 'noisy' Earth. It's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope will be at Lagrange 2 site that is out beyond the Moon (1.5 million Kilometers).

Add to the mix that use time of the Hubble is timed to seconds or less and the same is for every one of the space observatories and you get a real bottleneck. Plus when the Hubble was the new kid on the block, computers and adaptive mirrors were very primitive compared till now and you start to see why new observatories are still being built on Earth.

As for active vulcanology, Mauna Kea, while considered dormant, last erupted 4,500 years ago and given it's pre-eminent height and atmospheric clarity, is thought to be worth the investment.