The five: large telescopes

[Judi Lynn]

As the most detailed images of the sun are released this week, we look at other huge telescopes and their discoveries
Anna Cooper

Sun 2 Feb 2020 00.30 EST

Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope
This week astronomers released the highest resolution of images taken of the sun’s stormy surface. The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii is the largest solar telescope in the world. The images reveal the nugget-like structures that make up the solar surface, each the size of France. The image is the start of a 50-year study of our closest star by the scientists working at the telescope.

South African Large Telescope
The South African Large Telescope is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, and claims to be one of the darkest observatory locations in the world, far away from city light pollution. It can detect objects as faint as a candle on the moon and was jointly responsible for detecting the first white dwarf pulsar in 2016.

Gran Telescopio Canarias
Located 2,267 metres (7,438ft) above sea level in La Palma, Canary Islands, the Gran Telescopio Canarias is currently the world’s largest single aperture telescope. In 2016, it obtained an image of a galaxy 500 million light years away, 10 times deeper into space than any other telescope could have observed from the ground.

WM Keck Observatory twin telescopes
The twin telescopes of the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii each weigh 300 tonnes. Astronomers Saul Perlmutter, Brian P Schmidt and Adam G Riess, who won the 2011 Nobel prize for physics relied on data from these telescopes for their research on exploding stars, which added to the evidence for the existence of dark energy – the mysterious force that could be behind the acceleration in the expansion of the universe.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/02/the-five-large-telescopes-solar-surface-images

[eppur_se_muova]

1. And they don't give the aperatures of any of them ???

That's the single most relevant criterion to almost any astronomer.