UBC/Laval 2.7 Meter Liquid Mirror Telescope (original) (raw)

ADS

;

• Borra, Ermanno F. ;
• Cabanac, Remi ;
• Content, Robert ;
• Gibson, Brad K. ;
• Walker, Gordon A. H.

Abstract

We report the successful development and operation of a large astronomical liquid-mirror telescope. Employing a rotating 2.7-meter diameter mirror with a surface of liquid mercury, the telescope images a half-degree diameter field centered at the zenith. Located near Vancouver, British Columbia, it is equipped with a low-noise 2048x2048-pixel CCD detector, operating in TDI mode, which produces continuous imaging of a 20 arcminute-widestrip of sky with 2 minute integration time. Images with FWHM of 2 arcseconds or less are regularly obtained. This image quality is limited only by atmospheric seeing and star-trail curvature. The telescope is equipped with a series of narrow-band filters, designed to produce 40-point spectral energy distributions from 0.4 to 1.0 microns of all detected objects. These will allow classification and redshift estimation of approximately 25,000 galaxies and 1,000 quasars to a limiting magnitude of R~21.

Publication:

The Astrophysical Journal

Pub Date:

December 1994

DOI:

10.1086/187667

10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/9406057

arXiv:

arXiv:astro-ph/9406057

Bibcode:

1994ApJ...436L.201H

Keywords:

• Bandpass Filters;
• Big Bang Cosmology;
• Charge Coupled Devices;
• Mercury (Metal);
• Radio Spectra;
• Spectral Energy Distribution;
• Telescopes;
• Elastic Properties;
• Low Pass Filters;
• Magnitude;
• Sky Surveys (Astronomy);
• Astrophysics;
• COSMOLOGY: OBSERVATIONS;
• TELESCOPES;
• Astrophysics

E-Print:

submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters, 15 pages + 4 figures, uuencoded compressed PostScript, UBC-200694