When we think of telescopes we usually think of the Hubble space program. Ever wondered what happened to the good old optical telescopes? Huge telescopes already exist which operate in parts of the spectrum invisible to the human eye – from low-frequency radio waves beyond infrared to high-frequency gamma rays beyond ultraviolet – but no traditional optical telescope is more powerful than the LBT. The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) gathers more light than the Hubble Space Telescope and has 10 times the resolution. It took its first images late last year. But only now have pictures taken by the LBT been released – taken in January using both of its 27ft-diameter mirrors. Showing a spiral galaxy – romantically named NGC 2770 – which is located 102 million light years away from our own Milky Way. Color analysis reveals the temperatures of the millions of stars suspended in the flat disc of glowing gas. Believe it or not this telescope took 20years to build, hard to believe in this day and age. The telescope is the £60 million crown jewel of the University of Arizona’s Mount Graham International Observatory.

The LBT has been partly operational since 12 October 2005 when a single mirror was used to observe a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda.But with the unprecedented power afforded by its double-mirror configuration, the new device should allow astronomers to probe the universe further back in time and in more detail than ever before. Its two 27ft mirrors give its the equivalent light-gathering capacity of a single 39ft instrument and the resolution of a 75ft telescope.


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