World's Most Powerful Telescope Opens Both Eyes
After more than a decade of preparation, the world’s most powerful telescope is now looking skyward with both of its massive eyes wide open. The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), with its twin side-by-side, 8.4-meter (27.6 foot) primary mirrors, has successfully achieved first binocular light. The combined light from the two mirrors produce the image sharpness equivalent to a single 22.8-meter (75-foot) telescope. The LBT will provide new and more powerful views of deep space and help answer fundamental questions about the origins of the universe and the mysterious worlds in other planetary systems.
Comments:
hooray!!!!
... I remember this being done with the MMT in the early '80's. It used 6 smaller mirrors in a roughly circular array to improve resolution in all vectors, but not much detail about its success. Is the extra resolution in the LBT only seen in one axis or is there also benefit in the others? I also recall the use of two or three synthetic apertures on large amature reflectors to aid focusing and the extra diffraction even slightly out of focus made the masks useless unless optical alignment was spot on. With the LBT also be plagued by ghostly misaligned images?<br>-Guy
I have had the opportunity to visit and tour the Lbt on two occasions now as well as the mirror lab at the University of Arizona meeting with Roger Angel who conducted my tour. This machine is extremenly complex and is truly an engineering marvel. As an amatuer astronomer for many years now I can tell you this awesome telescope will redifine our understanding of the universe and we will see things with a resolution and clarity never before seen.<br>Corwin Matthews
Funding Member
