English

Optical Tests of a 2.5-m diameter Liquid Mirror: Behavior under External Perturbations and Scattered Light Measurements

Astrophysics 2009-10-30 v1

Abstract

Interferometric tests of a f/1.2 2.5-m diameter liquid mirror show RMS surface deviations about wave/20 and Strehl ratios of order 0.6, showing that it is diffraction limited. The mirror is certainly better than implied by the data because of aberrations introduced by the auxiliary testing optics. We have made detailed studies of the scattered light of the mirror. We have studied the behavior of the mirror under external perturbations. With this article we have reached an important milestone since we now have a good understanding of liquid mirrors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9706030,
  title  = {Optical Tests of a 2.5-m diameter Liquid Mirror: Behavior under External Perturbations and Scattered Light Measurements},
  author = {Luc Girard and Ermanno F. Borra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9706030},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

To appear in Applied Optics. Postscript, 14 double spaced pages, 5 tables 13 figures