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axialintellectual t1_j26jkqs wrote

> When it comes to observing our skies, it’s hard to compete with China’s initiatives. If the nation continues its current efforts it could soon lead the way in space observation.

This is just... Nuts? This article mentions several telescopes that will in the future do exactly zero things the rest of the world isn't already doing. Roman will do the same as the space telescope they discuss, at a slightly higher resolution, and the only way in which this segmented telescope seems to resemble Webb is the segmentation; but we were already doing that anyway?

Chinese astronomers have every right to be proud of their work, but not in this way please. Also, I do feel like it's more sensible to collaborate with other countries on these projects than doing them yourself, as it seems like there's a lot of essentially duplicate facilities now, but that's of course policy at a level most astronomers can't affect either.

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toodroot t1_j275ogd wrote

It can be very good to have multiple instruments that do similar things.

Also, the Chinese astronomers I've worked with are not confused about the scientific value of things. I don't think university or government PR says anything about the views of the scientists working in any organization.

Oh, and the reason I've worked with Chinese astronomers is because they do collaborate with colleagues outside of China.

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axialintellectual t1_j27ysh9 wrote

I know Chinese astronomers work with colleagues outside of China, but I mean specifically when it comes to instruments and telescopes like this. And sure, there are specific use cases where more similar instruments are better - but the pressure on 6m-class telescopes isn't that high. It's also not observing a different part of the sky, so then you're getting into the pure time series coverage thing, which again, nice, but not particularly groundbreaking either, and certainly not deserving of this level of hyperbole.

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GotGRR t1_j29eot3 wrote

Well, the end state is really an 8-meter telescope. So, that's something.

Also, doing the project incrementally sounds like they are trying to build expertise.

Last thought is that Asia has eight hours of night that no one else in the world gets. That doesn't sound like redundancy. That sounds like a wasted opportunity.

Mostly, good on them.

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nova9001 t1_j2789vl wrote

Imagine being triggered because China wants to build a telescope.

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axialintellectual t1_j27yxai wrote

It's more 'being annoyed at the blatant overstatement and propagandistic tone' but sure, call it being triggered.

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nova9001 t1_j280lci wrote

There's like 1 sentence quoting the Chinese space agency and the 90% of the article is by the author.

If you have issues with the content of the article, its really on the author.

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axialintellectual t1_j282cj3 wrote

I have issues with the author, yes, but I also genuinely have some issues with the way NAOC (seem to) approach this, however hard that apparently is to believe.

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mynameismy111 t1_j28al9o wrote

It's just the China vs the world part that felt off, the telescope is nice, but it's not a world beater

8 meters.... I mean 😂

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nova9001 t1_j28ik99 wrote

You know the article is written by the author right? He/she is the one pumping it up. There's only one short sentence where the official announcement was made its really a simple sentence.

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mynameismy111 t1_j28k41r wrote

I know but Im just excited about the

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Comparison_optical_telescope_primary_mirrors.svg/1280px-Comparison_optical_telescope_primary_mirrors.svg.png

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telescope

which was intended to have a single aperture of 100 meters in diameter.

Instead the biggest in 2027 will be 40 meters

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope

The observatory aims to gather 100 million times more light than the human eye, 13 times more light than the largest optical telescopes existing in 2014, and be able to correct for atmospheric distortion.

It has around 256 times the light gathering area of the Hubble Space Telescope and, according to the ELT's specifications, would provide images 16 times sharper than those from Hubble.

Author has a big single lens, but man will it be small compared to everything already under construction.

Nearest peer ready 2023 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory

Directish comparison https://cdn.eso.org/images/screen/elt_giant_optical_telescopes_infographic.jpg

For fun if u got this far: https://xkcd.com/1294/

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