Link to full articleLiquid mirror telescopes are amazing contraptions. They start life as a puddle of mercury in a bowl. Set the whole thing spinning and the mercury spreads out in a thin film up the sides of the bowl.
The problem
was it could only aim straight up and couldn't have correction factors for atmospheric distortion.
Instead the team have used a suspension of ferromagnetic nanoparticles in oil. A thin highly reflectivity layer of silver particles can then be spread across the surface of the ferrofluid to create a mirror.
Brousseau and co use an array of tiny coils behind the liquid to create a field that deforms the fluid surface as required. Their tests show this can be done fast and furiously enough to cope with the usual array of optical aberrations that the atmosphere throws up.
However, it may also be possible to use this technique to tilt liquid mirrors further than ever before. Ferrofluids can easily be made much more viscous than mercury and so combat the deforming pull of gravity. But they can also be deformed in a way that opposes gravity during each rotation of the supporting bowl. That could make them much more tiltable than mercury mirrors.
Topic: Magnetic enhancement to liguid telescopes (Read 1190 times)