Abstract

Observational optical astronomy is always scientifically driven to develop telescopes with fainter limiting magnitude and higher resolution. Larger ground-based telescopes are more sensitive, but give little improvement in resolution unless extremely demanding interferometric techniques are used. Space-based telescopes of traditional configuration such as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) give great improvements in resolution being diffraction limited, and a consequent improvement in limiting magnitude, but further improvements are limited by launch constraints.

© 1988 Optical Society of America