Question

What are the difficulties in using ground based optical telescopes and how can we overcome them?

Answer 1

Limitations of ground based optical telescopes :

• The intensity of light is deteriorated after passing through the atmosphere.
• The amount of light pollution by the cities reduces the visibility of the sky objects.
• The apparent position of the sky objects appears different from their actual position due to the turbulence in the atmosphere.

We can overcome these limitations by placing a telescope outside the earth's atmosphere, i.e in the space. Hubble space telescope and Chandra telescope are the examples of such telescopes.