I've been hoping that some day "soon", someone will come up with a process to make high quality thin composite mirrors at a price us amatuers can afford. One sight I've been watching for a while is Composite Mirror Applications (Peter Chen's company) at:
http://www.compositemirrors.com/
Go to their Publications link, click on Ultra Light Composite Mirrors and flip through the acrobat file. Also click on Apodized Apeture Exo-Planet Detection and look through that acrobat file and be amazed! Supposedly from articles I've read, CMA wants to eventually make composite mirrors for amatuers at a reasonable price.
I've read that there are hundreds of composite mirror companies in Arizona, but CMA is the only one that I've been able to find online. Has anyone investigated this line of mirrors/costs, etc? Or has anyone tried to make a composite mirror? I've often thought it would be interesting to take a 24" light reflector that's been machined to a parabola, and have it silvered to be highly reflective, and see if it would produce a decent image. I suppose someone's tried it before and it didn't work. Anyway, any thoughts on this?
Ron
http://www.compositemirrors.com/
Go to their Publications link, click on Ultra Light Composite Mirrors and flip through the acrobat file. Also click on Apodized Apeture Exo-Planet Detection and look through that acrobat file and be amazed! Supposedly from articles I've read, CMA wants to eventually make composite mirrors for amatuers at a reasonable price.
I've read that there are hundreds of composite mirror companies in Arizona, but CMA is the only one that I've been able to find online. Has anyone investigated this line of mirrors/costs, etc? Or has anyone tried to make a composite mirror? I've often thought it would be interesting to take a 24" light reflector that's been machined to a parabola, and have it silvered to be highly reflective, and see if it would produce a decent image. I suppose someone's tried it before and it didn't work. Anyway, any thoughts on this?
Ron
