ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN OBSERVATORY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: September 17, 2004
A novel Antarctic telescope with 16-m diameter mirrors would far outperform the Hubble Space Telescope, and could be built at a tiny fraction of its cost, says a scientist from the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney, Australia.
 On the right is the corrector: a nearly flat, steerable reflector. This receives the light from the sky and directs it onto the primary mirror, over at the left. The primary focuses the light onto a prime focus unit lying halfway between the two mirrors. The prime focus unit could be a number of things: a camera, a device that holds optical fibres for capturing the light, or a secondary mirror reflecting the light through a central hole in the primary mirror. Credit: Andrew McGrath, AAO |
"A telescope there would perform as well as a much larger one anywhere else on Earth. It's nearly as good as being in space", said Dr. Will Saunders of the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
At the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference in Glasgow in June, Dr. Saunders presented a concept for an unusual telescope that's well matched to the special conditions at Dome C, both in its optical design and in the way it's built.
It looks nothing like other telescopes. Much of it could be built of icecrete-snow compressed to form blocks as hard as concrete - while its mirrors could be made of the glass used for office windows.
Under the superb atmospheric conditions at Dome C this simple telescope could make razor-sharp images of large areas of sky.
 This is a nearly flat, steerable reflector. It receives the light from the sky and directs it onto the telescope's primary mirror. Credit: Andrew McGrath, AAO |
"With this simple telescope you could do the exquisite imaging that the extremely large telescopes plan to do, at a fraction of their cost" Dr. Saunders said. "But, unlike them, this telescope would also be a great survey instrument, able to map the whole sky with Hubble-like clarity."
