September 3, 2008
A big chunk of glass
A large telescope is being built in Chile - the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. The numbers on this puppy are huge -- the primary mirror is 27.5 feet in diameter. Today they announced a major milestone -- from Brookhaven National Laboratory:Giant Furnace Opens to Reveal 'Perfect' LSST Mirror BlankTo get an idea of the size, here is a photo of the mirror blank:
The single-piece primary and tertiary mirror blank cast for the LSST is "perfect", say project astronomers and engineers.
The LSST, or Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a large survey telescope being built in northern Chile, requires three large mirrors to give crisp images over a record large field of view. The two largest of these mirrors are concentric and fit neatly onto a single mirror blank. The single-piece primary and tertiary mirror blank emerged from the oven at the University of Arizona�s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab in Tucson, AZ, where team members gathered to celebrate this major milestone.
The Mirror Lab team opened the furnace for a close-up look at the cooled 51,900-pound mirror blank, which consists of an outer 27.5-foot diameter (8.4-meter) primary mirror and an inner 16.5-foot (5-meter) third mirror cast in one mold. It is the first time a combined primary and tertiary mirror has been produced on such a large scale.
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