Bad Astronomy

Doomsday Telescopes

I am writing a short article for a kids magazine about Hubble and other astronomical telescopes (I’ll have a link later when it’s published). I needed to find some images for the article, including pictures of the telescopes in question.

I was searching for a picture of some telescopes, and found this one for the European Space Agency’s ISO observatory:

What are we trying to teach kids here? Potential caption: “Astronomers use the ISO observatory to detect and destroy incoming alien fleets.”

Of course, the US can’t let Europe do this on their own. Just look at this artist’s illustration of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope!

Red alert!