A search for optical flares and flashes with a liquid-mirror telescope

Content, Robert; Borra, E. F.; Drinkwater, Michael J.; Poirier, Sylvie; Poisson, Eric; Beauchemin, M.; Boily, E.; Gauthier, A.; Tremblay, L. M.

doi:10.1086/115038

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This was followed by tests of a 2.5-m diameter liquid mirror 3 that also showed diffraction limited performance. An important milestone has been reached by Content et al 4 who published the first scientific paper that reported astronomical research with a liquid mirror telescope (LMT). Deep-sky mages have been taken with a LMT that tracked with a driftscanning CCD 5 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical tests of a 25-m-diameter liquid mirror: behavior under external perturbations and scattered-light measurements

Girard

Borra

1997

Appl. Opt.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Interferometric tests of a f/1.2 2.5-m diameter liquid mirror show RMS surface deviations ˜ λ/20 and Strehl ratios of order 0.6, showing that it is diffraction limited. The mirror is certainly better than implied by the data because of aberrations introduced by the auxiliary testing optics. We have made detailed studies of the scattered light of the mirror. We have studied the behavior of the mirror under external perturbations. With this article we have reached an important milestone since we now have a good understanding of liquid mirrors.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical tests of a 25-m-diameter liquid mirror: behavior under external perturbations and scattered-light measurements

Girard

Borra

1997

Appl. Opt.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore some LMTs could use specialized instrumentation to detect very fast time variations. For example Content et al (1989) used a 1.2-m LMT, built on the Laval university campus, to search for optical flares and flashes. They used a very inexpensive homemade telescope and its simplicity can be seen in a photograph of the telescope in Borra, Beauchemin & Lalande (1985).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their search shows that optical flares can easily be detected with a dedicated LMT and that LMTs can be built with very limited funds. As Content et al (1989) explain in their discussion one could easily observe flares, or periodic fluctuations, with time resolutions as small as 0.3 seconds by simply observing stellar trails with a fixed CCD detector, like they did with a photographic detector. Also, Pawlowski et a.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation of Observations Obtained With a Liquid Mirror Telescope by Comparison With Sloan Digital Sky Survey Observations

Borra

2015

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The results of a search for peculiar astronomical objects using very low resolution spectra obtained with the NASA Orbital Debris Observatory (NODO) 3 m diameter liquid mirror telescope (LMT) are compared with results of spectra obtained with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The main purpose of this comparison is to verify whether observations taken with this novel type of telescope are reliable. This comparison is important because LMTs are an inexpensive novel type of telescope that is very useful for astronomical surveys, particularly surveys in the time domain, and validation of the data taken with an LMT by comparison with data from a classical telescope will validate their reliability. We start from a published data analysis that classified as peculiar only 206 of the 18,000 astronomical objects observed with the NODO LMT. A total of 29 of these 206 objects were found in the SDSS. The reliability of the NODO data can be seen through the results of the detailed analysis that, in practice, incorrectly identified less than 0.3% of the 18,000 spectra as peculiar objects, most likely because they are variable stars. We conclude that the LMT gave reliable observations, comparable to those that would have been obtained with a telescope using a glass mirror.

show abstract

“…The most complete facility to date is the NASA Orbital Debris Observatory (NODO) which uses a 3-m liquid mirror (Potter & Mulrooney 1997;Mulrooney 1998). This telescope has also been used to make astronomical research (Content et al 1989;Cabanac, Borra & Beauchemin 1998) that proves the large scientific return for a given cost and the feasability of long astronomical programs using liquid mirror observatories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of 2-M to 6-M Liquid Mirror Containers

Content

2003

Experimental Astronomy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A new design is proposed for large (up to 6-m) liquid mirror containers. The design uses Kevlar, foam and aluminum, as in previous designs, but with a different configuration that makes the container lighter, stronger and more rigid. The results of finite element analysis are presented, consisting in the deformations due to temperature changes and to weight, and in the security factor for each material when maximum constraints are applied. Tilt rigidity is also analyzed.They show that the composite material construction technique gives a good performance up to 6 meter diameters. The figures and tables contained in this paper can be used as recipes to build containers having diameters between 2 and 6 meters.

show abstract

A search for optical flares and flashes with a liquid-mirror telescope

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Optical tests of a 25-m-diameter liquid mirror: behavior under external perturbations and scattered-light measurements

Optical tests of a 25-m-diameter liquid mirror: behavior under external perturbations and scattered-light measurements

Validation of Observations Obtained With a Liquid Mirror Telescope by Comparison With Sloan Digital Sky Survey Observations

Design of 2-M to 6-M Liquid Mirror Containers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About