NOVA: Hunting the Edge of Space - The Milky Way
Hunting the Edge of Space: The Mystery of the Milky Way
Wednesday June 20, 2012 9pm
Three centuries of engineering have produced telescopes far beyond Galileo's simple spyglass. Perched on mountaintops, orbiting the Earth and even circling other planets, these telescopes are revealing the solar system in detail Galileo could only dream of. This episode brings viewers up close with today's most powerful telescopes and embarks on a stunning journey to the planets and moons now being imaged as never before.
Pictured: The Apache Point Observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, home of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, one of the most ambitious and influential sky surveys in the history of astronomy. From 2001 to 2008, Apache Point’s telescope recorded deep, colorful images covering more than a quarter of the sky and mapped more than 930,000 galaxies.
Credit: Courtesy of David Axelrod