Ball Aerospace finishes cryogenic testing for James Webb Space Telescope mirrors. Ball Aerospace Technologies Corp./PRNewsFoto
Radio telescopes of the Allen Telescope Array are seen in Hat Creek, Calif. An array of 42 radio telescopes seeking signs of intelligent life in the universe will continue that work after private donors raised enough money to keep them going. The array is now being used for radio astronomy observations of our galaxy and other galaxies, gamma ray bursts, transient radio sources, and SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) . Ben Margot/AP/File
The Paranal Observatory, operated by the ESO (European Southern Observatory), is seen in the Atacama desert, near Santiago, Chile, February 9, 2010. Victor Ruiz Caballero/Reuters
The building housing the southern hemisphere's largest telescope -- the Southern African large telescope (SALT), perches on a windswept hilltop near the small town of Sutherland in South Africa's arid Karoo region. Mike Hutchings/Reuters/File
Artist's renderings of the Giant Magellan Telescope in its Enclosure. The telescope will be one of the next class of super giant earth-based telescopes that promises to revolutionize our view and understanding of the universe. It will be operational in about 10 years and will be located in Chile. Giant Magellan Telescope/Carnegie Observatories
Radio telescope dishes of the KAT-7 Array shift their alignment in a long exposure picture taken at the proposed South African site for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope near Carnavon in the country's remote Northern Cape province, May 17, 2012. Mike Hutchings/Reuters
This artists rendering shows the proposed Thirty Meter Observatory. A consortium of US and Canadian universities on July 21, 2009 announced plans to build the world's largest telescope in Hawaii. TMT Observatory Corporation/AP/File
The spherical dome of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) telescope is seen at Roque de Los Muchachos observatory in Spain's canary island of La Palma, July 24, 2007. The GTC is one of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. Santiago Ferrero/Reuters
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey's Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in the Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico. The SDSS is equipped with two powerful special-purpose instruments. The 120-megapixel camera and a pair of spectrographs fed by optical fibers measure spectra of more than 600 galaxies and quasars in a single observation. The two key technologies that enabled the SDSS, were the discoveries awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. Richard Pipes/The Albuquerque Journal/AP
A man uses a telescope to observe the firmament in the dunes of Samalayuca on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, October 14, 2011. People gathered for a 30-minute lesson on lunar observation as part of the 'Competitive Juarez' program which is aimed at improving the state's economic and social development, according to local media. Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
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