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.
There are several designs for such a telescope:
1. Twirled Pail: A pair of objects, one the mirror assembly and the other a counterweight possibly containing a camera assembly, are spun up to induce centripetal acceleration on the surface of the mirror assembly.
2. Half Toroid: A hollow torus (a doughnut or spare-tire shaped object) is spun up to maintain centripetal acceleration against the inside wall. The camera assembly sits in the center. The torus width is arbitrarily large. Optional other pieces include a large flat mirror in the center to allow randomly orienting the mirror without frequently changing the axis of spin.
3. Balloon: A balloon with a reflective liquid on the inside is spun up and it deforms itself into a parabolic shape. A flat mirror on the inside reflects light to the concave surface.
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:
- magnetic fields on a viscous and partially magnetic liquid;
- internal pressures or surface tension effects on a reflective liquid;
- creating the telescope while the reflective surface is liquid but depending on cooling effects to solidify the surface and then using that as the telescope main mirror.
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.
Famous quotes containing the words liquid, mirror, space and/or telescope:
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Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us: we lose the prime, to mark how spring
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How nature paints her colors, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.””
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“I have had no other treasure in this world than to see you once perfect and complete, as much in virtue, honesty and wisdom, as in all free and honest learning, and so leave you after my death like a mirror representing my person—your father—if not as excellent in fact as I would wish, certainly so in desire.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“from above, thin squeaks of radio static,
The captured fume of space foams in our ears—”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)