[Archangelsk]

This will be hugh. And not a moment too soon say I.

[CasearianDaoist]

OWL is dream ware. It will never get built.

[CasearianDaoist]

OWL is dream ware. It will never get built.

[Physicist]

A billion dollars, including 20 years of operation? That's dirt cheap compared to Hubble.

But hold: here come the science-haters to vent their spleens.

[Criminal Number 18F]

But with so many different telescopes competing against one another, deciding which one to support is a series problem.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Paradox]

Heck, for only a billion dollars, Bill Gates oughta shell out the money for one of these things. Could even name it "Heavens Gates" or somethin silly like that..

[Prodigal Son]

That is the 100-meter Overwhelmingly Large Telescope contemplated by the European Southern Observatory

LOL. 100 meters. Billion dollars.

I'm just trying to find a decent 80mm refractor for cheap so I can look at Saturn's rings ;-)

[Batrachian]

I'm looking forward to the Next Generation Space Telescope. 8 meters aperture and orbiting 100,000 miles out. Then we'll see some things.

[aruanan]

The new telescopes, they say, will be able to deliver images sharper than the Hubble's, while gathering much more light, bringing into focus the blobs of primeval stars and gas from which galaxies were assembling themselves 10 billion years ago, or glimpses of planets around distant stars.

And lots of embarrassing things like Markarian 205.

[ibtheman]

This would be a total waste of money, resources, and is judt nor needed in this day and time! There are far more importaant issues on the table, then looking into the stars, when we have Hubble! What a total waste of our dollars!!!!

[Publius6961]

This may sound whimsical, but I am of the opinion that if a 100 meter telescope is ever built, the moon is the only location for it. No "adaptive" lenses and electronics necessary.

[MikeD]

I'm a little skeptical that a 100-meter telescope will be built any time soon.

First of all, our biggest telescope (10-meter Keck) is four times larger than Palomar (twice the diameter = four times the area).

Second, the larger aperture is only useful if you can get diffraction limited images. Adaptive/active optics is fine, but only over a limited field of view. The isothermal patch above the telescope is only so large (roughly 4-m in diameter), so you would need advanced adaptive optics and multiple guide stars to correct a 100-meter telescope.

I vote that if we do build such a large beast, build it in 1-meter segments on the moon.

MD