An Eye as Powerful as Four Million Human Eyes to Map the Universe

Just caught a couple of articles on the new Great Canary Telescope which was funded by both the Spanish and Canary Islands governments..

An infra red cam should be functional towards the end of the year, while the telescope itself was inaugurated by Spain's King Juan Carlos on Friday.

www.eitb.com

The Great Canary Telescope (GTC), the world's biggest scope ever set to give astronomers a huge tool to uncover the secrets of universe, was officially inaugurated on Friday.

The observatory, based on the Spanish island of La Palma, has a circular mirror which measures 10.4 meters in diameter and will help astronomers to map the universe, analyze black holes and complete the research of the Milky Way.

This was a puzzling statement from the article...

According to Francisco Sánchez, general director of the Astrophysicist Institute of Canarias, the telescope will help to see a "lit match at a corner of a burning New York City".

bold=mine

Could this just be a mistranslation? sounds like a strange way to describe the capabilities of the new telescope..

For another article on the news please visit this link:

Spain Unveils Giant Telescope






[edit on 7/24/2009 by JacKatMtn]

I think what they mean is that it will be able to filter out the "close" light of nearby stars/galaxies and being able to see further out in to the universe. There was a pic going around this forum not too long ago showing the comparative sizes of known celestial bodies, which also included a pic of a small patch of empty sky, which when the telescope that took the pictures found hundreds of galaxies in the small area( it took 4 months of viewing the same spot to see those galaxies)

I could be totally wrong and maybe they're planning on setting NY ablaze but i doubt it.

reply to post by JacKatMtn

According to Francisco Sánchez, general director of the Astrophysicist Institute of Canarias, the telescope will help to see a "lit match at a corner of a burning New York City".

source

I would imagine he was pointing out the telescopes ability to find a distinct yet faint point of light, in an area of the sky dominated by a more brilliant spectacular light source.

reply to post by UmbraSumus


I agree. I wish he would've picked a better example though. Conspiracy theorists will probably jump all over that one. Or maybe it's just the social "meme" bleeding through? Everyone feels something coming; maybe his comments weren't purposefully ominous but were still more than just coincidental. who knows?

[edit on 7/24/09 by CSquared288]