Thousand Astronomical Unit – send a powerful hubble – NGST probe to 1000 AU and use the sun as the primary lens in a giant refractor telescope. Yes it would call for blocking the sun’s light carefully. Anyone know more about this?”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v131/ai_4722670?lstpn=article_results&lstpc=search&lstpr=external&lstprs=other&lstwid=1&lstwn=search_results&lstwp=body_middle

All I can find on TAU is a very old article from 1987 talking about it. I don’t know why it never went anywhere. Maybe it had to do with the very long time to get the spacecraft out to 1,000 AU. On the other hand it could be doing observations all the way out. You never hear about anymore so I’m assuming it’s dead as far as NASA is concerned. I think it was a good idea. Imagine, increasing our distance precisions to nearby stars by a factor of 500 and getting the first reliable distances to remote objects such as the Orion Nebula. It would have been good stuff.

Just a (slightly) off topic thought,,,

Gary

There is a twin quasar in Ursa Major at ra 10 01.3 dec+55 54. You need good seeing for this one.

Even tougher, is Einsteins’s Cross at ra 22 40.5 dec +03 21. This one is REALLY TOUGH! We did get it, but only try it with a big scope on an excellent night from a really dark site!

I use it as an example of the wonder of science. If you don’t know what you are looking at, the reaction is likely to be “Is that it?” if they see it at all. If you KNOW what you are looking at, these barely visible smudges at the edge of our vision inspires goose bumps. I literally was choked up, knowing that the quasar was 8 BILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY and the light I was seeing was created before the Earth. When some yahoo tells me that studying science somehow detracts from your appreciation of natural beauty, I just want to smack ‘em upside the head!

If anyone wants a great list of deep sky objects, I recommend The List put together by a friend of mine in Bradenton. It contains what he considers the best 400 deep sky objects (including the two gravitational lenses listed here) arranged by ra. It can be downloaded from the Local Group of Deek Sky Observer’s web site at

http://www.angelfire.com/fl/sapringer/images/List.pdf

“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it – once you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know,’ then it becomes possible to get at the truth.”

That’s the one thing most fundamentalists can’t seem to say. They always KNOW, don’t they?