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  • If the purpose of a telescope is to bring far-away things closer to us,

  • then why do we send some of them so far away?

  • The main reason to put a telescope into space is to avoid that perpetual troublemaker:

  • the atmosphere

  • since astronomers haven't yet figured out how to get rid of it.

  • And it's a big nuisance.

  • First off, the atmosphere plane gets in the way,

  • what with its clouds and smoke and haze than can block light from distant stars or nearby planets.

  • And even just the air in a clear sky blocks a huge range of the wavelengths of light,

  • pretty much only letting through visible light, and a smattering of infra-red and radio waves.

  • The atmosphere is also-

  • -HEY! Stop that!-

  • ...Distracting

  • At day, visible light from the sun bounces off of air molecules, and other small particles

  • and completely overwhelms the light from any other star you might want to look at.

  • At night, the light from the moon and from human sources bounces off the same paricles

  • and outshines the light from most distant and faint stars and galaxies,

  • washing out their images.

  • The atmosphere AlsO MeSSEs ThINGs up.

  • Air is constantly moving, and just like a heat mirage, this turbulence blurs and distorts starlight,

  • which causes stars to twinkle, and telescope images of stars to be blurry

  • We can avoid all of these nuisances by putting telescopes above the atmosphere, in space.

  • Plus, there are other benefits;

  • A space telescope can make observations 24 hours a day,

  • A space telescope can be put far enough away from the earth's infra-red warmth

  • and then cooled down really cold so that it can take clean infra-red images,

  • and a space telescope is a telescope we freaking put in outer space!

  • Of course, there are some downsides to space telescopes;

  • It's hard and expensive to get them there,

  • hard and expensive to fix them if they break or you want to upgrade to newer fancier parts,

  • hard and expensive to take people there on tours,

  • but really, How can you argue, with *this*

  • And this

  • And, this

  • And this

  • And this

  • And this

  • And even this

  • And this

  • And, this

  • This too.

  • And this.

  • Thank you so much for watching,

  • This video was supported by the James Webb space telescope project

  • at the space telescope science institute

  • where they put telescopes into space so you don't have to deal with stuff like clouds, and rain.

  • Thanks again for watching,

  • and thank you again to the James Webb space telescope project for supporting this video

If the purpose of a telescope is to bring far-away things closer to us,

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