[ATM] about the mirror, Angel and..........

["Vladimir Galogaza" <vladimir.galogaza@zg.htnet.hr>]

Completely off (atm) topic and yet....


Dr. Angel, who was born in Lancashire, England, and earned a doctorate in
physics at Oxford, said he was interested in astronomy as a child and once
starting grinding a mirror for a telescope but never finished it.

TUCSON - In the cavernous bowels of the University of Arizona's football
stadium, Roger Angel's mirror furnace was spinning like a captured flying
saucer
at a stately five revolutions per minute.

If everything works out, the mirror now forming in Dr. Angel's saucerlike
furnace will be only the first of seven making up a giant telescope with the
light-gathering power of a mirror 70 feet across. The Giant Magellan, as it
is
called, would be twice the size of anything now operating on Earth or in
space,
and four times as powerful. But there are many challenges. To blend their
light
at a common focus, Dr. Angel explained, all seven mirrors will have to be
part
of the same giant parabola. That means that all of them except the central
mirror must have an unusual "wickedly curved" asymmetrical shape.

More in NYT.

Regards
Vladimir.





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