A Ground-Based Scope That Flexes For Better Focus

Steve0987 writes "EE Times Online has an interesting article on a deformable telescope mirror that the University of Arizona has built. It uses 336 magnetic coils to deform the 2 foot secondary mirror and change its shape to compensate for everything from wind blowing against the telescope to atmospheric aberations. It is purported to provide 3 times the resolution of the Hubble telescope. (And you don't have to go into space to fix it."

Comments

Re:hubble is not obsolete yet

[PD]

Plus, time on big scopes is limited and there's a huge demand. Even the Palomar 200 inch scope, with optics that aren't as good as what we'd make today, keeps a full schedule of research. And that thing has to be 70 years old or something close to that. Big research scopes never become obsolete in the sense that nobody wants to use them.