Tag: Telescope Maintenance
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Polishing a Telescope Mirror: A Closer Look at the VLT’s Precision Craft
Overview: The Art of Keeping a 25-Ton Mirror Perfect Night after night in the dry air of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) relies on its meticulously polished aluminum mirrors to capture some of the most detailed views of the cosmos. The process of maintaining these 25-ton mirrors is…
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Polishing a telescope mirror: VLT at Cerro Paranal desert
What makes a telescope mirror so critical—and so finicky? In the world of high-precision astronomy, the surface of a telescope mirror is everything. The 25-ton (23 metric tons) primary mirrors of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) are engineered to gather faint starlight and reflect it into sensitive detectors with extraordinary accuracy. Yet just like any…