Astronomy: Global warming is blurring our view of space
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Climate change is bringing about global warming and it’s affecting us all. Astronomers say that it is even affecting our view of space.
How? The world’s most advanced telescopes were not made for today’s temperatures, and that is affecting our observations of the night sky.
This report comes after an analysis of 30 years of data from the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile, South America. It is the home of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).
What is happening to the VLT?
The VLT lies in the Atacama desert in Chile. The Atacama is getting warmer faster than the rest of the world.
The VLT was not built for the global warming that is happening now. Its cooling system doesn’t work properly if the sunset temperature is above 16 °C, which is happening more often now. This can lead to a reduction in image resolution making the pictures blurry.
Climate change is causing turbulence in the atmosphere. The Atacama is also influenced by various weather conditions like summer monsoons which are affected by climate change. All this affects how the VLT works and the images it produces.
Not only the VLT, but other instruments at the observatory are also affected too.
As global warming increases, astronomers are worried that our images of the night sky will continue to get blurrier. That’s why it is important to build future telescopes keeping global warming in mind.
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