14 DAY TRIAL // The Southern Hemisphere is known for the fact that it offers a more advantageous position for observing the Universe. Stars, galaxies, black holes, pulsars, and everything else in between can be seen more clearly from these regions. In fact, a team of experts from the United States and Australia has announced that it discovered the best place for astronomical observations on the planet, a cold, remote and tranquil region, where almost no wind and weather existed. Experts believe that a telescope built here could provide images three times clearer than the most advanced observatories elsewhere on the globe. The area, known as Ridge A, is located 4,053 meters high up on the Antarctic Plateau.
The place is not particularly remote, but the team that found it believes that no human has ever set foot there. It is extremely cold and dry, with little atmospheric fluctuations, which makes it perfect for building a telescope there. The average winter temperatures on Ridge A are around -70 degrees Celsius, and the amount of water in the air around it is most of the times less than the thickness of a human hair. Additionally, and most importantly, the lack of air fluctuations doesn't make stars “twinkle.”
“It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all. The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers. Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on Earth,” University of New South Wales visiting professor and Anglo-Australian Observatory expert Dr. Will Saunders, the leader of the new study, says.
Counter-intuitively, the best place to construct a telescope is not Dome A, the tip of the Ridge, but a flat side, located some 150 kilometers away. “Ridge A looks to be significantly better than elsewhere on the Antarctic plateau and far superior to the best existing observatories on high mountain tops in Hawaii and Chile,” Saunders adds. The site, whose location was published in yesterday's issue of the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society, is about 144 kilometers away from an international robotic observatory, as well as roughly the same distance away from a new, proposed Chinese observatory.
“Australia contains no world-class astronomical sites, and Australian astronomers face a choice between being minor players in telescopes in Chile or joining Chinese or European efforts to build the first major Antarctic observatory,” the expert adds.