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The Forever Telescope

Night Vision: The Faulkes Telescope North in Maui joined the network in 2005  Faulkes Telescope North/South/Courtesy Las Cumbres Observatory Telescope Network

Telescopes work great at night, but some cosmic phenomena demand more than 10 consecutive hours of observation. "Just as you can’t appreciate music that’s chopped up by poor radio reception, we can’t interpret a star’s signals interrupted by the day/night cycle," says Tim Brown, science director of the California-based Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, which in five years will allow astronomers to track celestial objects around the clock. When day breaks on one scope, scientists will, through the Internet, switch to another someplace where it’s still night. Telescopes are already online in Hawaii and Australia and will soon include scopes in Chile and South Africa.