English

Liquid Mirror Telescopes: A Review

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

I review the present status of liquid mirror telescopes. In a nutshell: LMTs do work and several have been built and used. Extensive interferometric tests of liquid mirrors (the largest one having a diameter of 2.5 meters) show diffraction limited performance. A large quantity of astronomical data have been taken at the NASA 3- m LMT and are currently being analyzed. Finally, I shall address the future of the technology as well as the issues of the field accessible to LMTs equipped with novel optical correctors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9706098,
  title  = {Liquid Mirror Telescopes: A Review},
  author = {E. F. Borra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9706098},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

12 pages, Postscript (from Microsoft Word). To appear in the Proceedings of a workshop on Science with Liquid Mirror Telescopes, M. Ferrari ed