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Science 7 July 2000:
Vol. 289. no. 5476, pp. 32 - 34
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5476.32
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News Focus

TELESCOPES:
Astronomers Overcome 'Aperture Envy'

Robert Irion

Many users of small telescopes are disturbed by the trend of shutting down smaller instruments in order to help fund bigger and bolder ground-based telescopes. Small telescopes can thrive in the shadow of giant new observatories, they say--but only if they are adapted to specialized projects. Telescopes with apertures of 2 meters or less have unique abilities to monitor broad swaths of the sky and stare at the same objects night after night, sometimes for years; various teams are turning small telescopes into robots, creating networks that span the globe and devoting them to survey projects that big telescopes don't have a prayer of tackling.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)