"Perfect" Mirrors Cast For LSST

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 2, 2008 @12:25PM from the billion-pixels-of-goodness dept.

eldavojohn writes "The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (which was partially funded by Gates & Co.) announced a world record casting for its single-piece primary and tertiary mirror blanks, cast at the University of Arizona. From the announcement: 'The Mirror Lab team opened the furnace for a close-up look at the cooled 51,900-pound mirror blank, which consists of an outer 27.5-foot diameter (8.4-meter) primary mirror and an inner 16.5-foot (5-meter) third mirror cast in one mold. It is the first time a combined primary and tertiary mirror has been produced on such a large scale.'"

2 of 114 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Forget the mirror! 3.2Gigapixel camera! by jriskin · 2008-09-02 15:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

The digital camera in this thing generates 15TB of data a day from its 3200megapixel camera. I'm assuming it has an array of sensors, but thats still a ridiculous amazing pixel count.
Re:You know the rule by JasterBobaMereel · 2008-09-02 23:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

Charles Simonyi gave twice as much as his billness ...he was head of MS Office and has actually been into space ...

--
Puteulanus fenestra mortis