The Future of Telescopes

Often, it is considered that a bigger telescope makes a better telescope. A larger aperture means a higher light gathering capability and a higher light gathering capability means better objects. However, astronomers and engineers are creating telescopes of the future, where a larger aperture does not necessarily mean a better telescope. A key example of this is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST for short.

LSST, to be housed in El Peñón, Chile, is a telescope designed for sky surveys, or images of wide star fields. It is designed to have a field of view of 3.5 degrees (the entirety of the Sun or the Moon would only take up 1/7 of this entire field of view). This new telescope will allow for this in its design. Instead of consisting of only two mirrors, the LSST will comprise of three mirrors, with the third "tertiary" mirror inside a large whole in the primary mirror. 

This diagram illustrates the light path of LSST

This telescope is designed and intended to collect data for a few specific aspects of modern astronomy. 

• Dark matter and dark energy. This telescope will image deep sky objects in hope of detecting weak gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing will help observe how much matter is actually in an area, which will help us detect if there is matter present that we cannot physically see, or "dark" matter.
• Mapping the Milky Way.
• Kuiper belt objects. The LSST will help us obtain a better understanding of the objects in our cosmic neighborhood by allowing us to create a better map of our Solar System. 
• Novae and Supernovae. We will be better equipped to observe fleeting events in space, such as star explosions.

LSST creators intend for this telescope to take more images per year than can possibly be processed by humans. This is why they want to make much of LSST's data accessible by the public, in hope that some discoveries will come about this way. Many other telescopes are currently using this practice.