paper

Ubc/Laval 2.7-Meter Liquid Mirror Telescope

arXiv:astro-ph/9406057 · doi:10.1086/187667

Abstract

We report the successful development and operation of a large astronomical liquid-mirror telescope. Employing a rotating 2.7-meter diameter mirror with a surface of liquid mercury, the telescope images a half-degree diameter field centered at the zenith. Located near Vancouver, British Columbia, it is equipped with a low-noise 2048x2048-pixel CCD detector, operating in TDI mode, which produces continuous imaging of a 20 arcminute-widestrip of sky with 2 minute integration time. Images with FWHM of 2 arcseconds or less are regularly obtained. This image quality is limited only by atmospheric seeing and star-trail curvature. The telescope is equipped with a series of narrow-band filters, designed to produce 40-point spectral energy distributions from 0.4 to 1.0 microns of all detected objects. These will allow classification and redshift estimation of approximately 25,000 galaxies and 1,000 quasars to a limiting magnitude of R~21.

submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters, 15 pages + 4 figures, uuencoded compressed PostScript, UBC-200694

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