The Universe en Rose

摘要

On a clear night, most astronomers would consider themselves lucky to be on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, in the control room of the world's biggest optical telescope. What could be more exhilarating than to know that 3.6 kilometers away, on the summit of this extinct volcano, the giant mirror of the Keck I Telescope is at your command? By all rights, astrophysicist Richard G. McMahon should have been sitting pretty. But on this night, he was frustrated. It wasn't the weather, and it certainly wasn't the telescope. Keck I had followed McMahon's orders to the letter, recording precious light from a particular patch of the distant cosmos. The problem was the telescope's near-infrared detector. Like all such devices used in astronomy, it was too small to do the job efficiently.