Largest Earth-Based Telescopes 2022: Sizes, Locations, and Other Details

Keck Telescopes

• Located in Maunakea, Hawaii. Has a diameter of 10 meters/32.8 feet.
• Allows astronomers to see deeper into space using infrared technology.

Hobby Ederly

• Located in Texas, United States. Has a diameter of 10 meters/32 feet.
• It is one of the world's largest optical telescopes. Astronomers used it to capture the light emitted by quasar, the brightest space object.

SALT (South African Large Telescope)

• Located in Karoo, South Africa. Has a diameter of 11 meters/36 feet.
• SALT is quite similar to Hobby Ederly. But, it has higher sensitivity, allowing it to capture the first white dwarf pulsar.

GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias)

• Located in La Palma, Spain. Has a diameter of 10.4 meters/34.1 feet.
• Astronomers used this telescope to capture densely popular galaxy clusters.

Are Earth-Based Better Than Space Telescopes?

Of course, space telescopes have the upper hand since they don't have to worry about light pollution.

Since they are already in orbit, they can capture images of heavenly bodies more efficiently than ground-based models.

Sciencing explained that Earth-based telescopes have some advantages over space models, such as the following:

• Earth-based telescopes cost less (around 10x to 20x cheaper than space-based ones) to build.
• Earth-based telescopes are easier to maintain since astronomers no longer need to visit outer space.

If you want to learn more about how Earth-based models are somehow better than space telescopes, you can click here.

Recently, China's Shenzhou 14 crew shared their captured space images.

Meanwhile, JAXA's self-destruct signal was sent to the Epsilon-6 after detecting a system error.

For more news updates about telescopes and other space equipment, keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

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Written by Griffin Davis