Liquid mirror space telescope
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A Liquid Mirror Space Telescope is a concept for a type of Reflecting Space Telescope which uses a dish of liquid mercury as its primary reflector. [1] Conceptually, it is similar to an earth-based Liquid mirror Telescope, but instead of relying on earths gravity to maintain the necessary parabolic shape of the rotating mercury mirror, it relies on artificial gravity instead.
Other possibilities include using magnetic fields, or simply relying on internal pressure and surface tension effects to induce a usefully concave shape in the reflective liquid medium.
The concept is seen as an enabler of very large optical space telescopes, as a liquid mirror would be much lighter to deploy and cheaper to construct than a conventional glass mirror of comparable performance.
[edit] References
- ^ Paul Hickson (2007), “Liquid-Mirror Telescopes”, American Scientist 95: 216-223
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- General concept with sketch
- Sci-Astro discussion thread
- Technical Paper describing the propulsive acceleration method
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