Why don’t us astrophysicists build telescopes on the beach? On an island in the middle of the ocean they’d be so far away from light pollution!
You could pick islands like Soneva Fushi or Soneva Jani in the Maldives and then after collecting your data at night just chill out on the beach during the day.
So then why are the next generation of massive telescopes like the Rubin Observatory and the Extremely Large telescope both being built in the high altitude Atacama Desert in Chile instead?
Well unsurprisingly they’re not built at beaches because that doesn’t get us the best scientific data.
Instead there’s a few things you need when it comes to professional observatories...
00:00 - Introduction
01:54 - Low light pollution
02:34 - Good weather
03:11 - Low Humidity
03:42 - Thin atmosphere (and adaptive optics)
05:44 - Outro
06:27 - Bloopers