The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Observatory System

[WD-42]

Lots of weird marketing speak on here for an astronomical observatory. “Modular design that leverages economies of scale” what? These are telescopes, not telephones. There’s a very small amount of scientific grade ones in existence and they are all different.

Best of luck to them anyway.

Edit: it looks like the Argus array at least is a project out of Chapel Hill. Better info here: https://argus.unc.edu/specifications

Schmidt probably helping fund it.

[reportingsjr]

> what? These are telescopes, not telephones. There’s a very small amount of scientific grade ones in existence and they are all different.

Have you not been following modern satellite and telescope bus architectures? Both planet and spacex have been using this model to great effect over the last decade.

[wittyusername]

As you can see by the name of the thing, they are married

[halfmatthalfcat]

Tell that to Bill and Melinda.

[knorker]

Not sure why that's relevant. But if that's interesting then it's probably also relevant that it's an open marriage.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-13439603/eric-...

[DetectDefect]

Likely Schmidt's repentance for his unbridled Burning Man trips.

[benburleson]

Interesting. Wayne Rosing (Silicon Valley pioneer and early engineering lead at Google) has been working on a global telescope project for a long time now also.

https://lco.global/

[WD-42]

Ben you still have code running here.

[tectonic]

The level of negativity in these comments is surprising. We can certainly debate whether billionaires should exist at all, but given that they do, here’s one who’s putting his money towards advancing cutting edge science instead of buying a third mega yacht. I am strongly in favor.

[jacquesm]

Schmidt has done more damage than he ever will undo with his philanthropy.

And one yacht should be enough, especially if it is like this:

https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/eric-schmidt-and-his-wi...

[ojo-rojo]

I agree with you. I clicked into this hoping to hear what new things we could learn or discover with the new observatories. Commenting on the more positive and informative side would be a better use of time and energy I think :)

[omoikane]

> The level of negativity in these comments is surprising

Maybe not so surprising:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46512881 "65% of Hacker News posts have negative sentiment, and they outperform" (2026-01-06, 456 comments)

[xqcgrek2]

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/former-google-ce...

[pama]

The broader availability of data from astronomical observations starts to become relevant in the present time of coding agents that can help hobbyists.

[closewith]

The age of plausibly buying a legacy is gone, so these vanity projects inspire more cynicism than anything else.

[motoxpro]

I am not understanding how this is bad. Other than a guy made a bunch of money and is spending it how he wants. Or is that the whole reason?

[amelius]

Well, this is better than what Bezos is using his surplus money for.

[defrost]

It's a shame they're taking advice from leading astro project groups about the globe rather than yourself.

Still, I'm suprised to hear from you that the Lazuli Space Observatory will apparently operate from ground level.

[niemandhier]

From the website: “The Lazuli Space Observatory is a 3-meter–class space-based astronomical facility designed for rapid-response observations and precision astrophysics across optical and near-infrared wavelengths.”

And we wall should be happy he doesn’t want to put a swarm of micro telescopes into the sky to mimic his approach for the ground based telescopes.

The last thing astronomy needs is even more satellite constellations polluting the night sky.

[terminalbraid]

But that's objectively not true unless you're just trolling or being sarcastic? The cost and reach of ground based systems still has a considerable amount of use, still have many projects of those types ongoing. There's been a ton of great work on things like adaptive optics and laser guides have been excellent breakthroughs in extending that reach.