Comments on: New Telescope on the Lookout for Near Earth Asteroids, Comets

By: ElderKorean

ElderKorean — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:05:49 +0000

This sounds like a project that people could comtribute spare cpu's for – farmed out like seti@home…looking for the rocks@earth perhaps.

By: Astrofiend

Astrofiend — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:18:24 +0000

I must say that I'm far more excited about the possibilities for detection of transient events than I am about the asteroid work. Should be a great tool for it, until LSST comes along and blows everything else away with its spectacular etendue!

By: ddk

ddk — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:10:38 +0000

Thanks, Nancy. There are many of us out here that rely on you to keep up with such things. What a great perspective (example) on where we are with this technology.

By: Feenixx

Feenixx — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:39:59 +0000

RetardedFishFrog Says:
"So according to Moore's Law, we will have cameras that powerful in our cell phones in 15 years. (If cell phones in their current form still exist at that time.)"

The chip (currently 40 cm square), that's possible, perhaps…. but what about the lens? Currently, more pixels in a cell phone camera doesn't make sense any more. Impressive megapixel figures for cell phones are only a point for advertising, really. Phone lenses aren't up to it.

By: RetardedFishFrog

RetardedFishFrog — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:41:45 +0000

So according to Moore's Law, we will have cameras that powerful in our cell phones in 15 years. (If cell phones in their current form still exist at that time.)

By: bse5150

bse5150 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:19:25 +0000

This is nice, but what do we plan to do if we find something moving in our direction? There are as of yet no plans on the table for defending ourselves from asteroid impact.

By: Don Alexander

Don Alexander — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:06:07 +0000

This will be an awesome tool for transient astronomy, and LSST will be even more so.

I just hope the computing power and especially storage capacity will exist to allow the inspection of images even after a long time has passed…