Why are Observatories/telescopes located so high up?

Question

I am referring in a more specific sense to the (large) telescopes of australia, but i would assume that the answer would be the same for all the world!

Answer 1

Thinner air up higher makes for less distortion. Also, the troposphere is very chaotic, since it's where all the weather occurs. The farther you get a telescope out of the troposphere, or the atmophere for that matter, the better the viewing. That's why they launched the Hubble space telescope into space, to get out of the atmosphere altogether.

Answer 2

Just some clarifications. No Earth bound telescope is above the troposphere. Being closer to what you are viewing isn't a factor since what you are viewing is 100s of thousands to billions or trillions of miles away. The height of a mountain isn't significant.
The main reason is the atmosphere as some have mentioned. New technology run by computers is able to compensate for atmospheric distortions and has made earth bound telescopes better. If we could get the largest earth bound telescope in an orbit, that would be the best - too big, not going to happen.

Answer 3

Our atmosphere scatters light and so the light reaching the telescope is less than what it would if the telescope was high up where the atmospheric scattering is not present. A high altitude is the next best alternative before telescopes could be sent up using balloons and now are in orbit around the earth. In other words, faint stars can be better observed when the air is clear and the airpath is mimimum in that location, i.e high on a hill.

Answer 4

The main reason is to put as much of Earth's atmosphere *below* the telescope as possible. Our atmosphere looks pretty clear to our eye, but when a telescope is trying to gather a tiny bit of light from some object hundreds or thousands of light years away the atmosphere seriously distorts and otherwise disrupts that light.

The Hubble Space Telescope is much smaller than many Earth-based systems, but because it's completely outside Earth's atmosphere it has "seeing" power orders of magnitude greater than the largest telescope on Earth.

Answer 5

The thing that ruins astronomy more than anything else are the city lights .So the higher above the better.Out here in Calif. we have the Palomar Obsev. it used to be in the middle of no where but now civilizaton has caught up.The only thing the cities around can do is use yellow street lights to cut down on the brightness.

Answer 6

Stars appear to twinkle due to the refractive effects of different layers and densities of atmosphere. The less atmosphere their light has to pass through, if it is located high up, the less twinkling, and also the less amount of dust scattering and absorbing precious photons of light. It is very important to locate them well away from large population centres, to minimise light pollution from street lighting, cars, etc.

Answer 7

to get away from the lights of the city

Answer 8

So nothing interferes with their view such as trees and buildings.

Answer 9

so astronomers can get a closer look at the stars and nubelas