Telescope in Tenerife to seek out life on other planets
Thursday, October 23, 2014 @ 9:42 AM
TENERIFE will be one of just eight sites with a state-of-the-art telescope installed to seek out other planets with life on them.
Part of a plan started eight years ago by Åarhus University and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen – both in Denmark – a network of small telescopes specifically designed to hunt for Earth-like planets are being set up around the world to study the stars and their individual solar systems.
One of these, which forms part of the SONG Programme, went up yesterday (Wednesday) at the Teide Observatory on the Canarian island of Tenerife.
It is much smaller than most other modern telescopes, being only a metre in diameter, and sits on a transport container where it is controlled remotely using an ordinary, basic internet connection.
The cost of the telescope, at four million euros, is cheap in comparison to the majority of others, and has been designed, developed and built by the two universities.
Astronomers in Denmark aimed to design a latest-generation prototype of a robotic telescope relatively cheaply and easy and efficient to run, in order to make scientific discoveries for relatively little money.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com