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This is the biggest known ground-based telescope in existence. They make them
bigger, but they’re all floating in space, because that’s the best way to
avoid atmospheric distortions, and other artifacts. For those of you not in
the know, Earth launched two arrays of telescopes for something called Project
Topdown. These are currently on their way out into the two intergalactic voids
adjacent to each face of the Milky Way Galaxy. They’re all about the practical
applications. I won’t go the details, because you can look it up in the
central archives, but I’ll say that the purpose of it is to map our galaxy, as
well as peer into the local group, unencumbered by the light and other
distractions that come from being within the “border” of our own galaxy. Of
course, these are not the only telescopes in existence, and it’s not like
we’ll ever dismantle the more local ones in favor of using Topdown
exclusively. Earth still has its Bouman Interferometer Array, and other worlds
in the stellar neighborhood are working on their own projects. Castlebourne
isn’t trying to make any breakthrough discoveries with its Teledome, but it
certainly seemed logical to build it anyway. At 5400 square kilometers, the
Sugimoto Phased Radio-Optical Telescope takes up nearly the entire area of the
dome. You might ask yourself, why is it even under a dome? It shouldn’t need
to be. Other telescopes certainly aren’t. Well, dust; that’s why. The space
within the confines of the dome is pristine, and very easy to keep
well-maintained. If they had to worry about dust storms clogging up the
sensors, it would be this huge constant chore. So instead of a geodesic dome,
it’s a smooth one. And instead of diamond, it’s made of an ultra-clear
polycarbonate. It’s not a single object, however. There are seams in it, but
they’re bonded at the molecular level. So if it suffers damage, only that
section has to be replaced, but that’s only in the event of catastrophic
damage, because it’s just as self-healing as any other metamaterial. As for
the telescope itself, the name tells you that it’s both radio and optical.
It’s also not made of a single, uniform lens. Nanomodules can shift between
states, allowing for the absorption of a wide range of frequencies on the
light spectrum. There is an atmosphere on Castlebourne, however thin,
and it does create artifacts on the image, but as I’ve been saying, they
didn’t engineer this to be perfect. We have plenty of alternatives, and
they’re always building more. If you want to see the telescope first hand, you
can come here, but obviously, the prospectus includes a live feed of the
image, and a constant readout of the data, for your own analysis and
synthesis. So you don’t have to come here, but it’s cool to see anyhow,
so I still recommend it.
