New Prospects For Research

National attention may be focused on astrophysics later this year, Professor of Astronomy John P. Huchra says, after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launches its Space Telescope (ST) this December.

At $1 billion, the 100-inch telescope is designed to detect objects up to 30 times fainter than can now be seen.

"It's a great thing that will make enormous progress for astronomy," says Professor Emeritus Fred L. Whipple, former director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA). The ST would gain the additional range because its view would be free of obscuring, human-produced light and atmospheric pollution, Whipple said.

But Huchre, a director of the Baltimore-based project, says that the device will be used mainly to examine known objects more closely and will have little effect on the big bang theory. "It's going to do cosmology in the small sense," he says. Joseph Silk of the University of California at Berkeley agrees, saying that the ST will have only an indirect impact on big bang research. However, "We'll have a better understanding of galactic evolution, and you have to know that to understand the earlier universe," he says.

Closer to home, the CFA has proposed building a $20 million, four-meter telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. "Harvard has been dragging its feet," however, content to rely on the Smithsonian-owned observing facilities, says Geller. The new telescope would cost two-thirds of the center's annual operating budget.