Liquid mirror space telescope

A liquid mirror space telescope is a concept for a type of reflecting space telescope which uses a reflecting liquid such as mercury as its primary reflector.[1]

There are several designs for such a telescope:

Regardless of the specific configuration, such a telescope would be similar to an earth-based liquid mirror telescope. However, instead of relying on Earth's gravity to maintain the necessary parabolic shape of the rotating mercury mirror, it relies on artificial gravity instead.

Other possibilities for inducing a parabolic shape in the reflecting liquid include:

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.

References

  1. Paul Hickson (2007), "Liquid-Mirror Telescopes", American Scientist 95: 216–223, doi:10.1511/2007.65.216

External links


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